


Spectrum

by Lendra



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Humor, Can't tag everyone / everything because spoilers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Apocalypse, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Suspense, Tender Idiots, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:35:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26620759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lendra/pseuds/Lendra
Summary: Of all things possible, he never anticipated color.A man crafted of militant self-discipline and forged in the fires of biological warfare where the oscillating environment of hospital and barracks yielded little but a shift in grayscale, Shirogane Takashi had never thought what he would miss most of Earth was her variety and vibrant display of colors.A story in which Earth is gone and fighting to stay alive goes deeper than Shiro ever imagined.
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 79





	1. Red

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a long time in the making and for some reason I'm incredibly nervous to put it out. I have a lot of anxiety affiliated with creativity these days, but I'm hoping those of you here will enjoy this first chapter!

* * *

**R E D**

* * *

Of all things possible, he never anticipated color.

A man crafted of militant self-discipline and forged in the fires of biological warfare where the oscillating environment of hospital and barracks yielded little but a shift in grayscale, Shirogane Takashi had never thought what he would miss most of Earth was her variety and vibrant display of colors. 

Having been born in the wake of the war, he had the privilege to witness the rapid unravelling of society as resources dwindled and the voracious appetite of human greed exacerbated the mass extinction of all known life on Earth. One would think the threat of intergalactic domination by a nigh comedically villainous alien dictator and his alien army would unite the planet in defense of her splendor and beautifully delicate balancing act of life and death. Reality, however, takes form in the primitive theater of humans, wishing to maintain wealth, power, and influence, obliterating any and all obstacles to their cause; swallowing all of Earth in the gaping maw of human ambition so vast and gluttonous, it extends out and into the stars. 

The last Shiro had seen his home planet, the radiant glow of blue that haloed it and all the colorful spatter of life had baked dry and cracked into a slate of gray rock. When the atmosphere destabilized, the animosity among mankind transformed into hysteria, a race to flee Earth’s atmosphere in desperate search for safety. And once those who survived had reached the stars, the inevitable unfolded.

War.

Always war. In all recorded human history, it is the worst of their species and their populace dwindles to numbers below comprehensive recognition; a scatter of them across the galaxy in desperate search to colonize and reform. Tenacity is the spine of human vitality and carved into Shiro’s cerebellum, an anchor of amygdalin instinct, is survival. Amidst warfare still well intact, it is the most useful tool humanity could have granted him and he has ensured to keep it keen. 

And yet, it always comes back to color. 

-

Red.

“Pidge,” Shiro moves quick through the corridor of control panels and metal work. The glare of red warning signals illuminate the spacecraft as he moves, ducking beneath large, exposed veinwork of wiring and code. “I thought we were done running diagnostics.” He comes up behind a fluffy head of strawberry blonde, silhouette radiant from a display screen they’re rapidly tinkering with.

“Not me this time,” they quip, adjusting glasses on their nose as they work; seamless. Shiro’s thick brow furrows, contemplative, before cocking a chin over his shoulder to bark through the noise.

“Hunk?” 

There’s a distant clamber before a robust man emerges with a stumble around a corner. His large palms are lifted, dark against the contrast of what looks to be flour coating them. “Innocent, scouts honor.” Often jovial, the annoyance etched on him is good enough an alias for Shiro. There weren’t many others aboard aside from them.

“Tak,” Pidge. Shiro turns and catches eyes with them as they display a digital schematic of their ship and point to the source with a flat expression; located in the sector just above them. It’s a familiar exchange of exasperation that passes through them before Shiro takes a breath, positions himself, and yells.

“Lance-”

“ _GUYS!!”_ Lance, both presumably and coincidentally, bursts out from a large valve-like door above them, startling all three. Brown hair is a muss about his face, and despite the tawny of his skin, flush colors his cheeks. It could be the strobe of red blinding all of them, though.

“You set the alarms off, Lance.” Shiro is a patient man; stating the obvious is a hint of him endeavoring that virtue. Lance, however, doesn’t falter.

“I know, I did it on purpose-”

“Are you sure you weren’t screwing with flight controls again?” Hunk sounds reasonably skeptical, which insults Lance, evidently.

“No!” A beat and Lance wavers. “Okay, yes, a little- but the alarm was purposeful, I swear!” He slips back into the chamber and out of sight, calling over his shoulder as he fumbles to kill the alarms. “I found oxygen!”

The immediacy of the mood shift is startling. The trade is meteoric, their exchanged looks incredulous, as though it were more likely they had all simultaneously misheard. 

“Lance, what did you-” 

The red vanishes, and cabin lights stabilize to the familiar glow of macgyvered technology and engineering; all oranges, greens and other muted illumination. It’s ambient quiet when Lance emerges once more, smile wide and eyes as blue as Earth once was.

“I found oxygen.” 

-

Blue glows bright on the map; a holographic display of geographical data projected in front of them. It’s the color that had been coded for the most essential of atmospheric elements, an homage to their mother planet Pidge had said. Seeing it in clusters dense enough to register on their less than optimal oximeters is a rare and highly celebrated occurrence.

What Lance has found is a planet. 

Tucked into a distant star system, unassuming and devious of surrounding galaxies, said planet is smaller than Earth with what looks to be pockets of oxygenated atmosphere. It has not permeated the globe in full as Earth had, a bizarre phenomena that Shiro is neither chemist nor biologist enough to fully understand. Magnetic or radioactive interference of even distribution could be one gimcrack explanation, but space has proven more a persistent mystery than not. 

“Damn...good find, Lance.” Coming from Pidge, it’s quite the compliment. Lance looks particularly radiant with the praise. Shiro thinks, were he more familiar with the birds of paradise, he’s sure Lance would look strikingly similar. Yet, they don’t exist; not anymore. 

“How have no other O2 scavengers found this place, it’s basically a goldmine.” Hunk is inspecting up close, the bulk of his frame leaning over the edge of the display table and eclipsing a portion of the holograph. Lance, leaning lazily on him with amicable familiarity, pushes off. “Who cares, the longer we wait, the more likely we _won’t_ be the only ones.” He folds his arms to punctuate his point. 

“Haste could get us killed, but I do think we should work quickly.” Diplomatic as always, leadership comes naturally to Shiro. “Pidge,” he turns to them as he speaks and with a toothy grin of confidence, Pidge snaps their specs onto the bridge of their nose and gets to work. Being a pillar of strength that has recovered their motley crew from imminent demise on more than one occasion, it comes as no surprise that Pidge gets them the full rundown of schematics and data available from their vantage. With Hunk’s talent for engineering to act co-pilot to Pidge’s technology, their approach happens within a 42 hour period and the reason for the planet's solitude reveals itself. 

Surrounding most of the visible surface of the planet and dominating the relative atmosphere is a thick, angry haze of storms. Sand storms, for the most part, to be precise. 

The sediment is a similar richness of rust that blankets Mars and the clouded whirls are akin to armor. Had they a ship properly equipped for the job, it would be perhaps potentially fatal, as opposed to likely. Still, the find is too precious an opportunity to let the risk persuade preservation over perseverance. The entirety of the planet isn’t impenetrable and they have braved similarly impossible missions before. 

They can do this. 

It takes a matter of finding clear ground and a brief study of weather patterns for them to take initiative to land. Even in the areas where plumes of sand don’t smokescreen the crust below are visibly murky; thus descent is tricky, optimistically put. Shiro is their best pilot, yet he always leads the charge as an experienced officer. It’s the best option of the two and so, he suits up. 

If there is one thing he’s grateful to the war about, it is the exponential increase in quality of all space apparatus. Even as space nomads, fugitives to some depending on the angle, their suits are quality enough to withstand the battering of terrestrial debris. It’s not without risk, certainly, but Shiro is confident enough. Regardless, team morale is an essential tool if not also a backbone to keep them sane when traversing a star speckled, expanding infinity. Keeping composure and credence alive and well is necessary despite his mood.

Shiro’s helmet seals airtight, pressurizing, oxygen filtrating the respirators. All systems are in check and Shiro locks himself into his thick tether lifeline before the hatch releases. They hover just above the gale of sands, the world bright from a star they orbit, a sky not quite blue, but Shiro can squint and possibly fool himself. He grips a handle as he leans out into the open sky, scouting for clear landing as they circle.

The earpiece of his intercom dispels Hunk’s voice. “See anything decent?”

Black brows furrow as he sweeps the copper colored obscurity. “Not yet. Keep circling, I’ll-” Shiro goes stiff, a peripheral hook drawing his gaze out toward a shock of color he’s certain he’s hallucinated. He leans, eyes narrowing to focus while anticipation of it dissipating from view sits hot. 

It doesn’t dissipate. Shiro’s knuckles go white.

“Shiro?” 

-

“Green,”

He sees Green.

“What? What did he say?” Lance. There’s a momentary buzz as he, Pidge, and Hunk chatter wildly over the intercom and Shiro is lost to it. He can’t look away. It’s veiled hazel with sand, but in the swirl of it are peeks of vibrant, healthy flora all patchy with colors emerald, jade, chartreuse, and Shiro’s heart thunders. He whips back to regard the team.

“I said I see-” 

The ship jolts, so sudden and powerful, it feels as though they’ve met the white cap of a tsunami and Shiro is flushed out with the purge. He’s rocketed from the belly of the craft and drops with the ever reliable pull of gravity. Reflexes sharp, he snatches his tether so the jolt of the cord pulling taut doesn’t snap his spine. His biceps burn with the draw of muscle and his ears are a muffle of voices shouting. 

“I’m okay- I’m alright-” He speaks through the cloud of it, working quick within the spike of adrenaline to climb. Hunk is braced above at the mouth and hauling Shiro up by the lead with Lance beside him. Lance reaches, ready to catch Shiro’s arm outstretched. He lifts, their palms fit together, and the aircraft lurches again. Whipped from Lance’s grip, Shiro’s vision is a flash of copper sands and neon vital signs within his visor as he twists in a spasm of gravity and storm. He endures the lashing of the gales, pulled into the red waves as sand pings at his suit. He feels the rip before he sees it, the violence of the debris shredding at the fabric of the rope and all at once, it goes slack and Shiro plummets. 

The hysteria over his intercom becomes white noise as his ears are a deafening ring. He watches the rapid decline of distance to the surface in numbers; ticking down in the display of his visor faster than the beat of his pulse. 

The ship becomes an obscured shape above him and the cries of his teammates are muted static as Shiro falls out of sight. His mind is a rapid mosaic of choices and reflections, a clash of vicious instinct to survive and desire to succumb. Less than 800 meters remain before impact. There’s an abrupt burst of pressure then, the sudden whistle of projectiles streaking past him before they impact below and embed themselves into the sand. A burst of light and flame ignite the ground below and Shiro feels the rush of heat that billows up around him. It’s a reverse of his descent in a wave of light and smoke and with drilled precision and reflex, Shiro tenses into a protective cross of limbs not a second before he strikes the fine powder of the planet’s crust. 

Blackness swallows him.

-

What wakes him is a glow of pink.

Consciousness comes back to him in stages, vision being the first. It’s a blurred smear of grayscale and the distortion of pink gleaming and fading in pulses. When his vision sharpens, he’s able to distinguish it as a scroll of words across the screen of his helmet. 

**-** **_IRONMENT_ ** _. CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE SUSTAINED. OXYGEN LEVELS LOW._

**_SEEK STABLE ENVIRONMENT._ **

Shiro surges upright and does the one thing he shouldn’t. He gasps for air. 

Displayed percentages of system reserves drop and Shiro must swallow down the agonizing urge to cough. His lungs feel packed with grit and the impact had been mighty unkind to his ribs. Moving sluggish with injury, Shiro shakes himself to heightened awareness and aspires to engage all faculties. In trying to push himself to his feet against the winds and sands, Shiro buckles under a pain so searing, his perception goes white and his hearing funnels out. When sight returns, he cradles his right arm as shock begins to fade and pain begins to flare.

Energy pulse missiles, whether fired intentionally or not, had broken his fall enough to save his life, yet looking at his arm, it’s clear that was the sacrifice. Intact as it is, the suit has been burned off, stripped of his flesh there and the limb has taken hit from both explosive and elemental battery. It’s difficult to discern damage beyond that, Shiro simply knows it will be useless. 

He wrestles to stand, legs sore, but mobile. There is no discernable shelter of what he can see, and what he can see is limited to a 3 foot radius at best. Odds are invariably poor and panic seeps in like hot poison. Familiar as he is with the sting of anxiety, he hasn’t the air to breathe deep and steady. Keeping static would be best should communications with his team be feasible, but the hissing leak of oxygen threatens death by asphyxiation should he waste breath speaking. 

He’s uncertain coms are even working. 

He can’t waste time. 

He has to move.

All at once, a switch flips and Shiro is fully engaged. He works rapidly, keeping breath shallow and precise as his left hand works the frayed lead from around his torso to loop the tear of his suit. It’s a poor seal, but impressive enough for a tourniquet made of only one hand and unfitting material. Once his direction is chosen, he moves.

Time, eventually, bleeds. 

Ripped from his feet by the whipping winds, keeping direction is nigh impossible. The environment is a chaos-ridden deprivation chamber as Shiro can hear nothing but the roaring of the storm and his shallow panting; vision a similarly sightless endeavor. He’s unsure how much time has passed, how far he’s traveled, if he’ll die this way. 

Hysteria threatens, yet Shiro pushes forward and thinks of Earth. 

His foot catches and his body collapses to the sediment, stars exploding in his vision. Exhaustion becomes evident as Shiro tries to pick himself upright and finds his muscles locking up. Oxygen levels at 3.62 percent and dropping glare on the screen and Shiro bites down on the madness of telling it to shut up. A second attempt to lift and Shiro feels his head go dizzy; reaching dazedly, reflexively to catch himself. His hand lands on a taught object; fashioned of something other than desert, and when he grips it, it doesn’t give. 

How he pulls himself up, he’s unsure, but upright he becomes and sees, with difficulty, what he’s clutching is a bolted down cord of material, braided and hard. Deliberation at this point is fatal. With what energy remains, Shiro drags himself down the line. It’s an impossible venture, most likely, but hope is a far flung dream that Shiro spitefully refuses to let go of. 

So, he pulls. 

At 1 percent oxygen remaining, Shiro pauses; heavy, deliberate, and breathes. He thinks, maybe it will be like diving. So he takes one last lungful, and dips beneath the surface. His body burns with it after a minute, and after two, Shiro’s peripherals darken.

Then, it appears.

The shape of it is an obscure thing in clouds of rust and a vision blackening, but Shiro can recognize a bunker when he sees one. The breath that finally escapes comes in the form of a scream, for his cry to be heard, somehow, by anything or anyone at all. It’s funny, really, how lucky he has been in all of this and wonders if this is where his luck runs ironically dry. The shores of salvation are a popular location for death in many a folk tale; perhaps he can make peace with it. 

Abruptly, the structure dispenses a glow of orange from somewhere above and with it, a person. What happens is an indistinct bustle of Shiro’s lungs seizing and the world phasing out in pulses of black and somewhere in between bouts of consciousness, he’s out of the storm and inside the bunker. With a strength he’d long thought gone, Shiro rips the helmet from his head and, like breaking the surface of a long dive, gasps. 

Oxygen. There’s _oxygen_.

His eyes are a spray of white and colored spots, temple beaded with sweat and limbs numb as newly oxidized blood pumps through him and settles the nausea of organ failure. 

Fuck tragic folk tales; he’s always hated them. 

A mess of limbs on the floor, Shiro lifts his head and sees what looks to be the gleam of a blade directed at him with precise intent to threaten no movement. It’s of no consequence. The knife is the last of Shiro’s sight before all faculties are spent and Shiro drops into unconsciousness with startling immediacy. 

-

When he wakes, he anticipates being carelessly propped in some corner and bound at best or heavily bound and barricaded in some alien cell at worst. He is, in fact, bound, but he wakes in far more luxurious conditions than he’d bargained. 

His body has been stripped of the suit, his arm loosely tended, and he has been moved to what Shiro can only guess is a bed. Ache settles in with a deep kind of hunger that feels borderline noxious. Sitting up takes effort but Shiro’s been through worse. Whomever it was that hauled him inside, they’d been cautious enough to bind Shiro’s wrists but not his ankles. He stands, not without difficulty and almost pitches forward and knocks his head into the adjacent wall. Luckily, he catches himself and avoids further head injury. 

The bunker is petite in size; designed for an intimate and specialized staff that had been made long ago and never quite kept up to date on renovations. It’s reminiscent of what any sci-fi enthusiast would envision, given the environment. He finds as he walks, observing its old and worn character, that it is in similar fashion to his own ship.

It’s inevitable that he happens upon an occupant at some point, Shiro just hadn’t expected it to be the next room he walks into. 

He comes to a dead stop at the tip of a very familiar knife. It levels with his chin and is held steady in a tight and precise grip. There’s little to say about who it is that wields it; their face is obscured by a dark hood and mask. Where eyes would be, sit two spheres of light that cast rich tenebrosity across their body. They’re tightly fit with seemingly advanced body gear designed for movement and limber combat. In such moments, keeping calm is a learned behavior that Shiro is bitterly grateful for. 

There’s a beat before the blade is withdrawn and dexterously tucked into a holster at their thigh. They lower the hood with a shake of their head, but the mask remains; a full enclosure of skull. Hooking a thumb over their shoulder, they speak, voice a warp of technology.

“Sit.” 

Shiro, with reasonable skepticism, hesitantly takes his eyes off the masked individual and peers over their head to see what looks to be an observation deck; dome shaped with one half a hexagonal splay of thick glass windows armored in metal shutters, the other an array of control panels and surveillance displays. Dead center of the room sits a chair. It isn’t well fortified and there appears to be no manner of restraints beyond what already binds his wrists. Lifting a brow, Shiro shuffles his way over and, after a brief inspection of what appears to be an entirely normal chair, gently sits. 

“You know, if you’re aiming to interrogate me, I could give you a couple tips.” He says it conversationally, comedically genuine and thinks oh, that’s right, he has a concussion. 

The masked individual stares before advancing upon him with controlled steps. 

“Would you like me to interrogate you?” It sounds like a threat, almost, but not quite.

Shiro is colored surprised. “This isn’t an interrogation?” 

When they speak again, even against the electrical interference, they translate exasperated. “Do you _need_ me to?” 

Shiro blinks, as if truly considering it before he sniffs; evidently amused. “Preferably not.” 

Something passes through the two of them and Shiro would be willing to bet money that the drone of noise coming from the other is a heavy sigh. In retrospect, having an unexpected exchange with a stranger sporting a head injury in this environment can’t be terribly enjoyable. They deliberate a moment before marching past him and returning a second after to deposit what seems to be some manner of food in Shiro’s hands. 

“You’ve been out for two days.” They say and Shiro sniffs it before taking a tentative bite. Speaking english with a humanoid physique is no indication that the food would be edible for Shiro. It tastes, however, akin to military rations that one would have if they were lucky. He takes another bite and delights in it; finding joy in the simple pleasures of life isn’t so difficult when you’ve only nearly just died and your head is busy playing catch up. 

The masked other doesn’t appear terribly perturbed by him.

“I’m not.” Oh. Apparently Shiro said that aloud. “You’re not exactly in a position to take risks.” They aren’t wrong. Shiro’s sense of urgency has been exhausted and currently, he’s perfectly content to sit and eat his rations. Had they a reason to kill him, Shiro’s fairly certain they wouldn’t be feeding him. A few slices of a blade could work just as well for what they would need of him, and with little resource to sacrifice if any. 

Shiro swallows the last of it with a contented huff. It’s a terrible meal, but a meal nonetheless. He can’t recall his last near death experience being so carefree. It’s rather pleasant. 

“Your suit didn’t have much intel.” The other has passed to the wall of screens and displayed across them are the schematics a data miner could extract from the neural taps of his suit; dialogue spoken and received, vital signs, recorded footage. The fall, however, had ruptured several connections. “So I have a couple questions.” They cock their head over their shoulder, the glow of the screens behind casting their shape in dark shadow, and all Shiro can see of them are the eyes of the mask. 

“Who are you, and how the _fuck_ did you get here.” 

-

Through much of his life, Shiro had learned to read his body and all its tells with exceptional accuracy. So, when Shiro faints in the moments following and wakes up all bleary eyed and disoriented some indeterminable amount of time later, he’s just a bit surprised. Admittedly, however, he feels more rested and less inclined to lunacy. He is still bound at the wrists, which could use improvement.

Having been kindly deposited to where he’d originally woken, Shiro walks his way into the only part of the bunker he is familiar with. Whether or not he is allowed to escape is a non-issue; he is ill equipped for the storm outside and no survivor living in conditions this uninhabitable is mad enough to part with any essential supplies free of charge. Shiro has no collateral to bargain with but information, and such isn’t worth keeping another mouth to feed around. However, he’s a solid 102 kilograms of dense muscle; to heft that and deliver his dead weight to a bed not once but twice? The stranger may as well be a celestial entity playing their hand in divine intervention. 

When Shiro enters, he spots them seated at the control panel, still adorning their well crafted suit and mask, but fitted to their torso is what looks to be nothing short of a bomber jacket. All at once, earthen nostalgia comes like whiplash. How this being on a weather cloaked planet far from an Earth now dead and gone had possession of unmistakable, iconic human consumer goods is a story Shiro wants to hear. 

Turning upon Shiro’s entry, they stand to face him and, in an unexpected casual gesture, tuck their hands into the jacket pockets. Their image, in a brief lapse of sanity, is reminiscent of an endearingly punkish superhero from the retro comic books Shiro had absorbed regularly as a child. The edge they hold over Shiro, however, is anything but endearing. 

They have a clear advantage and know it. Shiro is no threat to them. 

“Nine hours, thirty-two minutes,” they speak. Their mask warps their voice.

As Shiro understands, it’s how long he’d been out. “...Kind of you to let me sleep.” It’s not exactly kindness and Shiro knows this, but kindness had been bestowed upon him in small fragments, and he knows this, too. They tip their head and Shiro follows the movement to see the chair. He sniffs, something amusing to him about it all, and peers back at them, fishing.

“...No food this time?” It’s not the question Shiro’s asking.

They’re still for a moment, then slowly shake their head. No food. Nothing until Shiro talks. It’s to be expected. So, he seats himself down and faces the masked person; careful of his arm as he moves. There is no reason to lie. Humanity’s war wages even across a scatter of stars and galaxies. Plenty know of their strife after the death of planet Earth. _Why_ his faction had stumbled upon this planet is not in question; it’s _how_. 

So, Shiro tells them. They react only when Shiro mentions oxygen and oximeters. All other details of Shiro’s venture are met with stoicism. 

“What equipment do you use.” It’s the first bit of personality Shiro can garner behind a face both featureless and expressionless. Impatience. A taste of it.

“I couldn’t tell you.” Shiro notes a shift when he responds. Definitely impatient. Or, perhaps, they’re young. Shiro decides not to test their tolerance further. He is indebted to them, after all. “I captain a team of misfits, so to speak. All with various talents to keep us moving and make improvements where we can. One so happens to be a prodigal technologist and the other a genius in mechanical engineering and code. So...genuinely,” Shiro offers an apologetic look, “I couldn’t tell you.” 

They don’t look pleased. There is no visual tell, of course, but it radiates from them. 

It’s a provisional endeavor, but such is the essence of progress, so Shiro speaks. “This planet. It has complex life, doesn’t it.” 

The mask lifts. Shiro meets the eyes of it and doesn’t break.

“I saw it. Before the fall.” 

They don’t respond. Shiro, with practiced apprehension, applies pressure. “That’s what our oximeters were picking up; oxygen produced via photosynthesis, right? Is there a way-”

“No.”

Oddly, Shiro hadn’t predicted being interrupted. He rarely ever is. Black brows furrow and he takes a risk to keep digging. “Listen, if you could-”

“ _No.”_

It’s unlike Shiro to become indignant, but he is admittedly pressed to call himself free of frustration. He takes a firm step forward, having stood somewhere amidst the exchange and discovers quick it is a bad choice. Not a second passes before his vision wheels, ankles swept out from beneath him and his body collides with the floor. On his back and head spinning, he’s pinned, yet again, at knifepoint. 

“The storms will be raging for at least four phoebs or longer. I’ll provide shelter, food, and medicine to keep infection at bay,” they say this while they tilt their head in the direction of Shiro’s arm. It lasts only a beat before the bright and eerie eyes swing back to his. “In exchange, no questions asked, none answered.” 

A competitiveness in him itches, but Shiro is adult enough to pick his battles. He levels a dogged look with the mask, thick with rancor, and speaks low.

“Fine.”

A tick before the blade withdraws in similar adroit elegance as before. They pull back, nimble despite visible musculature beneath a tightly sculpted suit. Basic combat protocol wouldn’t suffice and Shiro is far too roughened for complex hand-to-hand. A scuffle wouldn’t end without consequence. 

It’s no matter. Shiro far prefers diplomacy.

He stands, rolling a smarting shoulder and stretches his neck. “My name is Shiro.” With wrists still bound, he makes an abortive attempt to present a palm to shake; restricted by his bind halfway and abashedly lowering his hands. “Shirogane Takashi.” 

The other watches him, silent, before preoccupying themselves with shutting down controls. There is no evident intention of reciprocity. Shiro is a very patient man and endures a few more button clicks and power downs before biting.

“What should I call you?”

They pause to peer over their shoulder, brief and speculative, before they’re back at work. 

“K.” They say it offhand, performing some sequence of gestures along the security interface. Shiro turns it over, curious, before he squares himself and tips a head of dark hair.

“Thank you, K, for saving me.” 

They say nothing, but there goes an unspoken exchange of acknowledgement. Shiro will take it as a small victory. The room grows dark with each section of power they divert and Shiro speaks low, wishing not to disturb the atmosphere, but finding it too bizarre to keep quiet.

“The storms. You said they’ll continue ‘four phoebs or longer’,” it’s not an increment of time Shiro is familiar with, despite K’s earlier use of human time signatures. Perhaps it is a fortnight equivalent. An unpleasant vacation of sorts, but Shiro can make due. “How long is that?”

There is a reticence about K, however, that leaves Shiro unsettled; a severity to their composure and earlier set of conditions that pricks a coil of something rancid in his gut. K finishes a typing sequence with a resolute click and turns to Shiro, drawing up their hood before one hand tucks into a pocket and the other rests on the lights of the observation deck; the last of them to kill.

“Five months,” they say, and the room pitches to darkness.

* * *


	2. Orange

* * *

O R A N G E 

* * *

In Earth’s early history of space exploration, it had become quickly evident that the human body had evolved to exploit the riches of Earth’s environment and were, alternatively, ill suited for all other aspects of the galaxy. Pluck humans from their covetous earthen atmosphere and they plummet from apex predatory to the lowest plane of the food web. 

The repercussions for extended pursuits in space took their heavy toll in the physical and the mental. Thus, three hundred years following the pioneers of space travel, all advancements in the field have prepared Shiro for various and dire situations of human discontent. 

Five months displaced is not unfamiliar to Shiro. Five months displaced from the only human contact he knows, buffeted by furor, entertaining the company of an intermittently hostile stranger while sporting severe injury, however, is a chaotic cocktail that tests all avenues of Shiro’s patience and experience. It’s made easier only with the knowledge that any other alternative is fatal. 

So, Shiro must learn to make peace with biding his time. 

In the Garrison, when it existed, they had taught typical militaristic techniques and basic drill patterns. The more advanced training came with rank and prowess, which Shiro had been sure to excel at in rapid form. With it, he had endured rigorous teaching of both a physical and mental caliber. Meditation had coupled with a few of the more advanced courses Shiro had pursued, although it had been admittedly less a priority than it likely should have been. 

It had helped keep him alive, after all. 

When the ice of the arctic had defrosted into the sea and winter did not restore it, when the ocean stretched into the desert and buried the sands, when everything alive began to drown and burn, it was a calm mind amidst the chaos that led Shiro to the stars. 

Four years since and Shiro cannot recall a time he’s ever had to mourn.

 _Now is not the time,_ he thinks, which is likely to be his response to it indefinitely. 

Not without difficulty, Shiro establishes a routine. Pleasantries with his bunker mate are a difficult and unpredictable affair, so Shiro settles for rigorous exercise, arm permitting. It’s tender with wound, but the salve provided numbs it well enough. It’s easier to weather the circumstances when Shiro is too exhausted to think. Unfortunately, he can’t exactly occupy every waking moment with workout, and sitting idle is rarely advantageous. 

He’d been told once, as a boy, that ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ was a saying for the impish and the foolhardy. Mischief, however, is an old friend of his that he’s more fond of than he often admits. So, at three weeks in, he starts digging.

He’s not a prisoner, not exactly, so wandering about the bunker isn’t off limits. Made for a personal team, it’s not terribly sizable, yet for a party of two, it’s big enough. There is little to reap from what remains there, most information outdated by a few decades or so. Why the bunker had been established to begin with isn’t clear, although whomever occupied it before K were presumably carbon based lifeforms; obligate aerobes.

K remains an additional mystery. 

Shiro is an intelligent man with keen enough intuition to hypothesize, however, that K is familiar enough with humanity to speak English fluently, use their metric system, increments of time, and English alphabet. They appear humanoid in figure, masculine in physique, but such is no guarantee; the morphology of several different carbon and silicon based lifeforms that had been thrust into human awareness upon the war is proof enough. 

Plus, as Shiro comes to find, K is friendly with shadows. Despite Shiro’s snooping about, were K not in the control room, they may as well not have existed at all. Familiarizing himself with the dustiest and darkest of crannies and corners, he’d expected to cross K’s path once, at least. Yet all Shiro knows of them is the glow of the mask before the lights had gone dark.

It makes for an uninterrupted turn about the bunker; the hushed din of the storm outside and the ambient, muted glow of the lights evokes a longing for the quiet chaos of his crew. 

He finds, once, a formulaic magazine stuffed in a dusty, abandoned corner of a modest cafeteria the bunker boasts of, pages a plenty torn and faded, the whole thing ultimately useless. Yet he scours it from cover to cover, a relic of Earth’s past, amused at the laughably inconsequential nature of it all; the tips and tricks, the gadgets and gaudiness. It is uniquely human, and more uniquely capitalistic, so Shiro enjoys what he can before dropping it into a waste receptacle. Perhaps Lance would protest were he there, but he isn’t, and meager entertainment would not bring Earth back.

Shiro wonders, if his crew were with him, what each of them would do with old earthen advertisements. He thinks of the keepsakes they would relish, of the precious bits of home they could garner from gloss text and wonders, perhaps that is why so many pages had been torn out to begin with. 

\--

It’s a month before Shiro deduces that the only information he’s to glean anything from is tucked into the database of the control room; a place that, even without official statement, Shiro knows is off limits to him. 

Oh well.

When one is stranded as gloriously as Shiro is with an arm still aching from what he thinks may be worse than just a slow to heal laceration, pushing boundaries is of minimal concern.

The first attempt he makes ends in royal failure. 

He plans it with what he believes to be precision, stealth and adequate timing and steps in to find K diligently stationed, adorned in their fitted, luminescent suit. They don’t turn to regard Shiro but the likelihood they don’t notice can’t be favorable. He fumbles, rapidly weighing the pros and cons of striking up conversation as though he’d intended to find them in the first place, or backpedal into the shadows of the hallway in hopes their data combing is very immersive.

Both options are terrible. But quick decision making had saved his life enough times in the past.

“Hey,” he starts, and K’s body language is a subtle suggestion that they had, in fact, not noticed Shiro’s entry; turning to face him with mask in place. Shiro swallows a cuss because of _course_ he made the wrong choice.

“Sorry to bother you,” it’s not a lie, not really, and Shiro thinks he can salvage this. “My arm’s still giving me trouble. You don’t happen to have anything that can help, do you…?” Again, not a lie. He operates better on partial truths. K stares, quiet, before turning back to the screens while speaking evenly.

“I can get you something by morning. Rest.” 

The concept of morning, noon, or night is lost to Shiro, but he supposes having access to all external information makes it simple enough for K. He retreats after his thanks and in the privacy of his company, allows himself a moment of anger. Everything feels too much for a brief, blinding moment, and Shiro couples with the ferocity of it. Anger is an infrequent thing for him, so he welcomes it in hopes it passes quickly. 

It does, in the form of a small, stone mortar with what looks and smells to be a freshly crushed topical salve. It’s positioned beside his cot when he wakes, as promised, and he feels something akin to endearment at the gesture. Logically, there’s little compassion to cull from it, but Shiro finds, startlingly, that he’s lonely enough to purposefully mistake the feeling. 

The onset had been slow enough not to notice. Yet retrospectively, it’s not surprising at all. 

It’s like a long, desolate drive on a dark and endless stretch of highway when your only companion is the one vehicle in front of you, a stranger, traveling in the stillness of night just as you. You don’t know when their journey splits from your own, but for now, you share the solitude. A beat passes, and Shiro thinks comparing K to the whimsical red glow of distant tail lights is poetry from cabin fever. 

He applies the salve. It stings, then soothes in a cooling kind of comfort. 

\--

The second time is more successful. More being a relative term. 

He’s caught almost immediately, but he’d managed a bit of reconnaissance before K had tied him into a pretzel and ushered him out without remorse. 

K’s flexibility is impressive, although weathering the ache in his muscles douses Shiro’s enthusiasm; just a little. He’d expected harsher consequences and wonders if K has any intention of actually hurting him. 

Cabin fever finds it charming. Intergalactic warfare with his own species and limited core resources that push them to the brink of existence tend to shift the standard for what is and is not charming, apparently. Shiro thinks little of it, because it’s almost humorous, and humor helps keep the passage of time tolerable. 

A little admiration for his quasi captor, pseudo savior couldn’t hurt - much.

\--

The third, fourth, and fifth time, Shiro can’t even get near the entrance. K sleeps on an irregular sleep cycle, not adhering to any comprehensible nocturnal or diurnal pattern Shiro knows of, and tends to change their day to day routine. It’s a challenge Shiro is eager to best for entertainment if nothing else. But there _is_ something else, and he’s getting desperate for it.

After the sixth and failed attempt, Shiro considers the bands around his wrists. They had been used only once upon his rescue, having activated to pull together and keep him fettered. Since then, they’d remained as an inoffensive band of entirely unresponsive, navy colored tech. Shiro had not thought to remove them, perhaps as a token of trust, but additionally did not gauge the possibility that they were anything other than an ID tag. 

The ease of monitoring his movements and ensuring he stays out of trouble would be simple with not just one, but two tracking devices latched to him. There’s no proof, but Shiro’s intuitive enough. So, he slips them off. Not without an immense amount of struggle, of course. His hands are large, and he’s no tech prodigy like Pidge or Hunk. It takes a myriad of efforts, physical and intellectual, but finally, they deactivate and fall off with a clink. The skin beneath is soft and Shiro runs his thumb along the crease of his wrist. 

Time is limited.

He moves quick, uncertain if the restraints would signal their removal or not. His designated quarters are not far from the control room, but he doesn’t risk delay. His steps are deft, moving with practiced, militaristic dexterity and keeps vigilant watch along the halls. It felt far too long a journey than it should have been when he arrives, his pulse thundering as he anticipates K manifesting from the shadows like a ghost in their eerie glowing mask. 

They don’t, and Shiro arrives undisturbed. He breathes deep, tries to slow the thrum of his heartbeat and knows he must work fast. With one last breath, Shiro dips inside and all at once, his body goes entirely rigid.

Seated at the control panel is K, yet the screens illuminating their silhouette do not yield the cool sculpt of masked cranium, but a fluffy head of dark hair. It stuns him, a coil of curiosity and anxiety gripping tight and he does not duck out of sight quick enough. K bristles, then whips their head around in time to see Shiro disappear into the hallway. 

Shiro’s head is a whirl, taken utterly aback by it all. He doesn’t think to flee; not right away. He makes it perhaps three steps before his feet are swept from beneath him and he’s pinned to the floor with the familiar set of glowing eyes boring into him from the masked individual above.

“Do you have a death wish?” They growl, all distortion and frequency. 

It’s possible, because Shiro idiotically blurts, “You have _hair._ ” He’s usually far better at diplomacy and poise, but when you go a while without any semblance of recognizable humanity, a head of hair is headline material. K twists him tighter. 

“Give me one good reason not to toss you into the storm.” 

Through the ache of K’s excellent limb lock, Shiro is nearly giddy. After a month, he can’t dismiss the lunacy as injury, but isolation is a similar enough deprivation that elation like this isn’t totally insane. K tightens, something pulls and Shiro shifts focus before he completely fucks himself over.

“I don’t think I have to,” he huffs, and a voice from the great beyond whispers that he’s only expediting the process in favor of fatal eviction. K confirms as such as they pull taught and Shiro nearly sees stars. He elaborates through grit teeth as he speaks around the hold. “I don’t think you’d waste resources on someone you’d kill for a small pursuit of curiosity.” 

K’s grip does not waver. “Curiosity killed the cat,” they snap. Shiro can’t help the grin that dimples his cheek. He pins K with a look of triumph.

“So you _are_ human.” 

K says nothing, but does nothing, either. They are decidedly still. 

“Look,” Shiro starts, grunting as breath in this position is difficult. “I can be a great asset to your cause, and I think you know that. I’m entirely at your mercy, you don’t need to hedge around making a bargain. Let me help you, it will benefit both of us.”

“You’re pretty confident-”

“I am,” Shiro does not hesitate. It markedly punctuates his statement. “I _know_ this planet has oxygen. I saw the results you recorded from my crash, the shrapnel and additional debris extracted from my arm.” He says this through clipped huffs of air. “Some of the chemical structure mimicked jatoba - wood from a popular tree found in rainforests.” 

Five years ago, Shiro would have thought it madness to recognize such advanced chemical structures of something he rarely saw in the deserts. But deep space drifts in constant search of precious element number eight flipped priorities. 

It’s a game of balance; whether Shiro’s knowledge of K’s mission is worth the help he could provide. It feels as though the walls are alive with the heavy beat of his blood when K pulls up and away, allowing Shiro’s limbs to abruptly untangle. He shakes it off, drawing in deep volumes of air, and drags himself to his feet, tenderly rolling his shoulder. 

“I warned you, ‘no questions asked, none answered’.” It’s spoken in quiet frustration, not in warning or threat, and Shiro can’t recall the last time being scolded made him grin. 

“Well, in all fairness, I didn’t ask any questions. I just sought answers directly.” It sounds like something Lance would say, and even behind the mask, Shiro can feel the glower. It’s difficult to reign in merriment, however, when the spectrum of emotion he’s experienced the past month is pathetically minimal at best.

There’s a beat before Shiro speaks again. “You could have told me you were human.”

He doesn’t expect it, K’s mask withdrawing in a phase of light. He sees what looks to be a very human face; human cheeks, human nose, human lips. Dark hair frames a human jaw in inky waves with a set of thick, human eyebrows guttered atop a set of human eyes. When they speak, their human voice is deep.

“I’m not.” 

Shiro doesn’t need to ask. It reveals itself on the crest of K’s ears; peeking out behind a curl of hair and tapered ever so slightly in a way not so human after all. K sees Shiro notice it, the surprise, and the curiosity. 

“So you aren’t,” Shiro concedes, voice breathy in subtle veneration. The moment following is quiet. Shiro wonders if it’s awkward, he can’t quite tell, and almost stumbles into saying something foolish. 

“Keith.” 

K cuts him off before he does. When Shiro does not react right away, K elaborates, clearing their throat.

“My name. It’s Keith.” 

It’s so whimsically, bizarrely earthen a name, it hits Shiro with a wave of something bittersweet and homesick. He thinks if Hunk were here, he’d probably laugh because what kind of alien is named ‘Keith’? 

Oddly, it fits. 

“Keith.” He tries it, wants the story behind it. 

One step at a time. 

He lifts a palm, a gesture of honest amenity, and when Keith finally takes it, Shiro tips his head. “It’s a pleasure.” He says it like he means it, and there is no mask to hide the expression or contort the voice when Keith responds.

“I doubt that.” 

Of all dispositions Shiro had entertained for Keith, cheeky was not one of them. 

\--

In a brief stretch of time, Shiro finds he can describe, with vivid simplicity, the nature of he and Keith. 

Awkward.

It’s neither good nor bad, Shiro simply can’t find a better way to place it. The gravity of the circumstance is an unknown variable for the both of them, and neither man knows if they should behave formally or not. 

Shiro has never been one to underestimate the communicative impact of body language, yet Keith’s personality appears to bloom before his very eyes in a comparatively short amount of time to the month Keith had been ‘K’ and a mystery. With a face and voice to supplement conversation, Shiro observes that Keith is more spark than stoicism. It is a bizarre kind of comfort that Shiro learns to covet in an equally bizarre way. It harkens to something familial, something ambivalent. 

It reminds him of the Garrison, when his ideas were met with challenge. When he was expected to prove himself. When illness didn’t eclipse pride with pity in the eyes of his peers. It’s a breath of fresh air.

Ironic.

But awkward. 

Their arrangement is best described as parlay. They are neither allies nor enemies, their positions a careful arrangement on a board game partially obscured. It’s further complicated by the serendipity of their chemistry. They, Shiro discovers, get along alarmingly well. 

Tension exists, of course. Shiro’s metaphorical leash has been lengthened, but not removed. He’s unused to wearing a leash at all. Not anymore. 

More than once, he steps outside his boundaries, and Keith doesn’t hesitate in reminding him. There is, however, an air of boyish benevolence about it that Shiro would venture to guess comes from navigating unknown territory. Keith hasn’t held a position of command before, and he’s likely hard pressed to isolate the only company he has under it. That being said, he doesn’t skirt consequence. Shiro’s company in an otherwise desolate sand trap grants him little immunity to punishment when punishment is due.  
  
The first it happens, Shiro having overstepped a boundary and into a sector of the bunker he’d not been allowed, Keith responds with tempered scorch that is, all at once, startlingly reminiscent of Pidge’s spitfire.

  
Their drive and purpose is definitive and cutting, a touch adolescent, more so Pidge than Keith, but similarly green to leveraging influence. Shiro remembers how Pidge had come under his wing, bristled and bright eyed gripping a mass of spark plugs in one hand.

Their uniform was orange; a cadet's adornment. 

_“You take me with you and I’ve got a ship ready to evacuate,”_ they had said, sounding more a threat than a promise, and Shiro recognized the head of strawberry blonde and amber colored eyes even before anything was said.

“ _My brother is on Mars base and as soon as Earth goes under, that’ll be the next target.”_ _  
_

The race to the stars had been unequivocal and mad. Resources to get there were designated to the affluent and wealthy, and despite being offspring to one of Earth’s most promising scientists, money and science often did not couple ethically at all; Shiro knew Pidge would be left to drown, their family a casualty of war and Earth’s undoing.  
  
A cadet's orange uniform was cheap; their lives cheaper.

Eying the plugs in hand, presumably gutted from several ships docked in the Garrison hangar, Shiro lifted eyes to settle on Pidge’s petite face, dwarfed further by a pair of large round glasses; a keepsake from their martian sibling.

 _"You know you’re sabotaging the preservation of humankind,”_ Shiro had said, wholly unconvincing. He, too, would be collateral damage; too diplomatic for surviving aristocracy, too wise for militaristic indoctrination, too relentless to risk leaving alive.

“ _I’m leveling the playing field.”_

An old and coveted flight partner of their brother, Pidge had known the only ticket off Earth’s surface was Shiro. And Shiro was lacking transport.

“ _You've got a ship?”_

Pidge’s eyes had sparked, gripping the wires tighter in a small and steady fist.

“ _And a mechanic.”_

\--

Keith dumps what looks to be an old maintenance suit before Shiro in a heap. Amidst a workout, Shiro pauses mid pushup to regard it, then Keith, and blinks. A bead of sweat drips from his temple in the beat that passes and Keith, finally, elaborates.

“I warned you to stop tampering with communication controls,” he huffs, evidently miffed he has to explain at all. Shiro nearly winces; having not anticipated being caught. 

“So you noticed,” he says it gently, standing from his position on the floor and dabbing himself dry with a sleeve. 

Folding his arm, Keith quirks a thick black brow. “You’re not exactly subtle.” 

“That I’m not.” Shiro says it through laughter. It’s not a conventional admonishment, but that’s been their confusing, awkward dynamic; whether or not they should fight the pull to be familiar. 

“I told you I’d give you line duty.” 

It would be rude to praise Keith’s authoritative flex, right? It’s weird to encourage him, _right_? Shiro’s entirely forgotten how not to be a leader and wants not to insult the only lifeline he has. 

“That you did.” It’s all Shiro can think to say without unintentionally undermining Keith’s sovereignty. Keith notices regardless and Shiro thinks he sees Keith’s cheeks go pink in a fluster of frustration. Were his crew present, he’s certain they’d snicker and tease him relentlessly about it. Subordination doesn’t come naturally, and apologizing for it feels terribly conceited. 

Keith takes pity on him, heaving a sigh before he gestures to the space livery. “Suit up. Meet me at the deployment sector.” He turns to leave.

That gets Shiro’s attention. “You’re coming with me?” 

Keith takes pause and sends an incredulous look over his shoulder. He says nothing, but amusement colors his expression, he snorts, and steps out. Shiro should be insulted, he thinks, yet he’s not.

He’s not sure what he feels. But that’s something to unpack later. 

\--

The suit smells terrible. 

Keith sees it in the wrinkle of Shiro’s nose as he slips the helmet into place and Keith’s lips curl.

“You get used to it.” He says before he pulls on a headpiece of his own. 

The storm, when they finally step out, is as bad as Shiro remembers. The vestibule is whipped with sands the moment the hatch releases and visibility is an angry tangle of rust. Keith moves into it without hesitation and Shiro, despite all previous assertions, does well to follow. 

“We’ll be repairing the lines. Follow my lead.” Keith’s voice is a crackle over the intercom. 

They work diligently, and don’t stray far from the bunker. Even so, Shiro is humbled by the ferocity of the elements, as though the sanctuary of the shelter had been lost on him until this moment. Perhaps that had been Keith’s plan, or perhaps not. Regardless, Shiro feels compelled to speak through the roar that surrounds him. 

“How long have you been here?” 

Keith pauses in sautering a frayed line. Their visors are reflective material, their faces hidden to a fishbowl mirror. There is a moment that Shiro worries he’s stepped out of line.

“You don’t have to answer if-”

“Three years.” 

There’s a beat before the stun hits and the answer leaves Shiro winded. Keith, however, continues his work. Shiro is a man of discipline, but there lays a fine line between that and hysteria. 

“Three years? With zero contact?” He’s briefed a few logs he’d been granted access to. None of them featured anybody occupying the bunker besides Keith. Keith, evidently, is not as pressed about the matter as Shiro.

“Well, not with _zero_ contact, no.” He tests the line, deems it sturdy. 

It takes Shiro a brief moment to follow, partly flustered, partly empathetic as he quips, “Aside from myself.” 

Keith stands, his figure obscured by red whipping dust. “Then yeah; zero contact.” He dwells on it no further, and gestures Shiro to move with him to the next line. The nonchalance leaves Shiro on edge, wondering what kind of mission he lends to that could possibly inspire such conviction.

It’s then Shiro remembers, suddenly, the brilliant strip of green he had seen before his plummet to the sand. It had lasted perhaps six seconds, witnessing the stretch of emerald and jade as though a section of Earth’s bountiful, magnificent rainforests had simply been displaced to someplace private and precious.

Hunk had said once, as they sailed through the clustered luminosity of the milky-way, that he had seen an incredible meteor shower from the peaks of Mount To’ona as a child; unlike anything he’s ever seen. 

_"I thought, ‘how amazing would it be to be up there, where all of that is happening’,”_ Hunk’s voice was quiet, Shiro recalls; their bodies floating as artificial gravity diagnostics were being tested. “ _And, y’know, I still think it’s amazing, of course, being up here, but…”_ Hunk was faced away from him as they drifted, and as he slid the back of a dark palm against his face, Shiro spotted little spheres of liquid gathered before dispersing like dandelion seeds.

He'd not yet changed from his uniform, singed from the fray of their escape. It was orange, as Pidge's was; as Lance's was, too. 

“ _I_ _would have watched the mountains more...had I known…”_

Shiro was too far to reach him, the droplets haloed about them and glittering like stars.

Maybe, Shiro thinks, coming back to the howl of the storm around him, he could endure three years alone if it meant that burst of green he’d witnessed would also endure.

He stands, and follows Keith into the dust. 


	3. Yellow

* * *

**Y E L L O W**

* * *

Moving is difficult against the elements, even with the suits. 

Despite double the usual manpower, work is agonizingly slow. Keith is deft and nimble, used to working alone and Shiro feels like a newly born fawn; unfamiliar with the process and sporting a partially paralyzed arm. He’s not so restricted as to be entirely useless, but it’s certainly foreign territory for a man crafted to be wholly capable. 

No wonder Keith scoffed at his earlier question. Line work experience on Earth does not compare to line work experience _off_ Earth; in lethal conditions with injury. It’s a challenge, to put lightly, against the tempest of sands and cacophony that penetrates even the sound barrier of their helmets. 

In the blur, his mind drifts. 

He thinks of his crew; if they’re safe, if they’re sheltered, fed, healthy. 

A memory, simple and brief, rolls over him. It’s of a time similarly cacophonous, when their ship could still see the fading blue glow of Earth as she died. 

Their crew was skeletal, made of riffraff and rebels, and reality weighed heavy and new among them. They were pushing through an asteroid belt, thickened with satellite graveyards and tech torn asunder from the fray of their war. It was loud as they moved, disruptive and unsettling, and Shiro found himself in the company of the three. He didn’t know them, then; not well, anyway.  
  
They were nervous, quiet and pensive, as though any words misspoken could alter their fate for the worst. 

It was Lance, the newest face to him, who broke silence.  
  
“ _There was this hurricane_ ,” he began, legs dangling casually from the elevated perch he was seated upon, “ _When I was younger. Tore the town to shreds_ .” He fans his fingers out theatrically, reminiscent. “ _I remember how_ loud _it was when it was happening; how my younger siblings would cry and cry, and my older siblings would try to shush us all; distract us with games like counting thunder claps and shit._ ” 

He smiled as he remembered, scuffed a knuckle under his nose before drawing a large breath. “ _And I just kept thinking...fuck, there’s going to be..._ so _much shit to clean_ .’” He’d laughed, like something about it was funny, head lolled forward. He sniffed, swiped another knuckle under his nose and turned to look at what once was the pale blue dot obscured by distance and damage. So, _so_ much damage.  
  
“ _I know it’s crazy, I just…_ ” He took pause, hesitant, sheepish; hopeful. “ _I just keep thinking, ‘maybe we can clean it up’.”_ _  
_  
No one had said anything, as though words misspoken could alter their fate. For the worse, or for the better.  
  
The memory fades, and there is clarity in that moment, a soft discovery, that he’s come to think of them as family. His chest feels tight, bizarrely so and he startles at the thought of a leak in his oxygen. Eyes dart to the readings. 

Oxygen level stable. 

He would dwell on it, on the idea that maybe this is grief, but at this angle his eyes catch something and his attention swings the other way. Reflected on the surface of Keith’s visor, nigh indiscernible against the chaos, is a steady blink of light. Shiro stares, certain it’s simply a feature of Keith’s helmet. Keith’s head dips, and the light does not follow. 

Eyes snap outward, spanning a wall of rust and whipping winds, expecting with a muted hook of dread in his throat to see nothing at all. But he sees it. 

In the distant furor, a light winks a very familiar beacon pattern. Shiro is standing before he recognizes and misses Keith’s voice as he speaks. He moves toward it, his pace hastening as he grows more certain with every step of what it is he’s spotted. A strong grip around his forearm draws him to halt and all at once, the world around him comes rushing back. He turns to see Keith, visor lifted and expression taught, but he doesn’t hear what he says, the thrum of blood in his ears too loud. 

Then, something like excitement tears through him.

“Keith!” Shiro turns, lifts his visor and grips Keith’s shoulders, startling him. “Keith, I see a beacon- my team’s beacon,” he turns back, struggles a moment, but spots the glow and points steady against the gale. Keith’s eyes follow, and briefly, the idea of psychosis haunts him; that Keith will turn to him and say he sees nothing. But Keith reacts to it, and Shiro, knowing time cannot be wasted, makes after it once more. 

When Keith stops him again, Shiro is prepared to argue. “This may be my only contact with my crew, Keith, I can’t-” 

“Let me.”

It’s not what Shiro’s expecting, and in the second that he stumbles, Keith is already pushing past him and into the expanse of brister and rust that nearly swallows him from sight. Shiro snatches composure before that happens.

“Keith-”

“I know this terrain best. Just watch my line.” It’s a crackle over their communicators and Shiro is, all too suddenly, alone. Everything that just happened is against every bit of typical militant protocol and Shiro’s disciplinary response is a scream of unease. Standing still in wait as someone else takes action is the least bit reassuring and Shiro weighs every option he can cogitate and finds himself frustratingly inept at doing much else than his directive. 

He watches Keith’s tether slide through the sands, thinks of how little control he has, and thinks Keith is too young a man to die on the far flung hopes of a stranger in a storm.

“Keith-”

The intercom is quiet. Shiro worries his lower lip.

“Come in, Keith,” he tries again. The line sounds disconnected, panic roils low and Shiro reaches to curl both hands tight around the slack of Keith’s line. Words crowd Shiro’s tongue, used to commands and orders, unused to whatever kind of fear this is, and then, Keith’s voice cuts in.

“I -- it --ro-” 

Shiro strains for a discernible sentence. “Keith, come in, please repeat,” he hopes he sounds calm. He feels far from it. Then Keith speaks again, and this time, his voice sounds as clear as if standing beside him.

“I got it.”

In the moment that passes, Shiro understands two things: one, that taking for granted the impact of human contact is something he will never do again, and two, that something is very, very wrong.

“Keith, get back to the bunker,” his fingers are tight around Keith’s line. The hairs on the back of his neck stand bristled, like he is the rod, and lightning is about to strike.

“I’m already-”

The line cuts dead, the light of the beacon smothered and the slack of Keith’s tether snaps taught. Shiro is nearly whipped from his feet, digs his heels into the sinking sands and braces the muscle of his body against the ferocious pull of Keith’s lifeline. That’s when it hits him. 

Blown from his feet, Shiro’s vision is a spiral before he lands hard in the sands, dizzy and winded. His recovery is rabbit fast, adrenaline a rush, and makes to grip Keith’s line once more. He hauls against the gale, uncertain of what is happening, but spares no time to think of it. Action is required now, and Keith isn’t responding over communications. 

The weight of the line is too light, and when Shiro drags the end of it into sight, Keith is not attached to it. 

“ _Shit-”_

Deliberation won’t help him any. He clips himself into the extra tether, confirms it’s secure, and marches his way into the sands. 

He has a memory, old and precious, of a time he was home. Not simply earth, but a home for him explicitly. He was a boy, no more than six, caught in the unforgiving mountain winters of Hokkaido. The storm had swallowed him in white, the bitter cold relentless, and he’d thought for certain he’d die there. But he did not stop to mourn a death that had not happened yet and pushed on. In time, he’d made it. He was wrapped in the thick of his grandfather’s hand stitched quilt and warmed at the foot of his grandmother’s fire; pulled to slumber at the smell of freshly cooked fish. 

Perhaps he could have froze to death in Hokkaido’s deep snows. But he didn’t. He just kept walking because he’d nothing else to do.

The tethers snap taught, and Shiro is brought back to the spray of tawny and vermillion. He can’t move any further, lest he unlatch himself. He sweeps the palled horizon, assured he’ll see nothing, and a hitch of breath snags as he spots the reflective film of the visor. Hurriedly, he detaches, and makes for it. 

Dread curls deep and hollow as he comes upon the helmet, and only the helmet. 

Knees press into the sand and Shiro lifts it, sees the crack that spiders across the glass and serrated panic seeps into the edges of his composure. Finding Keith will be hard enough; finding him alive will be even harder.

Shiro calculates the time as he moves, thinks it hasn’t been long enough since they last spoke for Keith to have suffocated. It’s little comfort, however, knowing time is ticking, and it’s been long enough for a fatality to creep in.

That’s when Shiro, miraculously, finds him. 

Already partially buried, Shiro rushes over and drags Keith’s body out of the strand in perfect military form. He’s limp, and conditions are less than optimal for standard procedure. Keith needs air, first and foremost, and there’s only one way to provide. 

A few calming breaths, then Shiro takes a lungful, and lifts his helmet off. 

The first to come is sound. There is a hiss of pressure at the removal of his helmet, the howl of the winds and the scream of dust deafening. Vision is next. What was already difficult to see becomes nigh entirely obscured. Shiro, with difficulty, slips the headpiece over Keith and fumbles to secure it. Finally, it clicks into place, and the seal is made. He cannot wait to see if it works. They have to move. 

What comes is a blur of adrenaline and balance. Keith is not difficult to carry, but against the battering of the elements and literally everything else, it’s the limit to Shiro’s capacity. He knows not if he’s on the right path, if the body he carries is dead, if his lungs will seize and die. He focuses instead on each step, one foot in front of the other, and thinks of the thick white bite of snow at his ankles, and the weight of the fish on his back. 

The fish, suddenly, wriggle to life.

Keith drops off his shoulder, and Shiro tumbles with him. He’s dizzy as he clambers, his vision a darkening vignette, and before he can process much of anything, his head is encircled by his helmet, and with it, a flow of oxygen.

He gasps for it, vision swimming, ears ringing. He’s hauled up by the arm and they’re moving hurriedly through the sands. When Keith said he knew the terrain, he wasn’t joking. Having only just recovered from some form of asphyxiated unconsciousness, Shiro assumed he’d need a minute to gather his bearings. Evidently, he was wrong.

The bunker appears and it takes Keith less than thirty seconds to key in the code and hurl them inside. The door seals, the foyer pressurizes and the two of them lay in a panting mess on the floor. As the lights stabilize, Shiro pulls off his helmet and Keith is shaking sand from his hair. 

“I’m sorry, Keith,” Shiro starts with a wheeze and Keith swings a frayed look his way. “I put you in danger,” he starts, but Keith snorts, digging sand out of an ear with a pinky. 

“You really didn’t. This isn’t my first time braving the great outdoors.” He coughs, scrunches his nose and grimaces as grit has lodged in his nostrils. Shiro wants to lay there and not get up. 

“What the hell happened? That pulse,” Shiro watches as Keith picks himself up, steadying his feet, “It happened when my crew and I first arrived. It’s what knocked me from the ship.” Shiro follows, rocky as he stands and favoring his arm as it aches terribly from the ordeal. 

“What happened when you fell from your ship was an electromagnetic pulse from this planet’s core. It’s the main reason I’m here in the first place; it’s a fantastic natural defense against prying eyes and ears.” Keith shakes his head like a dog, sand pinging off the metal of the walls. Something doesn’t add up.

“And you’re left to guess when the pulses come? No warning at all.” Shiro’s tone says he knows that can’t be true. When Keith straightens, he’s drawing his hair off his neck, deftly tying it up in a wavy little mess and blows at the bangs in his eyes that don’t quite make it. 

“Oh I have a warning.” He starts to shed himself of the suit, recovered enough by now to move quickly as he does so. Shiro expects him to extrapolate, but Keith doesn’t; preoccupied with tugging one leg free and hopping on the other to do it.

“So it wasn’t a pulse?” He starts to follow Keith’s lead, picking up speed as Keith finishes discarding the suit and evidently doesn’t appear keen on waiting because he literally leaves. It’s almost comical, Shiro scrambling to pursue; nigh clumsy as he works and finally kicks his foot free to make after him. 

He finds Keith at the control panel, clicking and tapping as he shuffles through several screens. Shiro comes to stand behind him, trying to discern the flashes of data that move rapidly from display to display. He can’t make much sense of it, but Keith soon triangulates a diagram of information that blares red across the monitors. What’s more eye catching than the unmistakable color of error is that Shiro recognizes what he sees. 

“That looks similar to the equation we’d use to measure damage from meteorites on a hard pan surface.” He says this as Keith straightens, folding his arms as he surveys. Shiro observes Keith nibbling his lip; a pensive proclivity.

“...This planet has a core made of four times the volume of concentrated metals than that of Earth’s. The result of those metals are the electromagnetic pulses and abnormal pockets of gravity. It makes for a great hiding place, but a dangerous environment. I have tools to combat that.” Keith turns eyes briefly unto Shiro, his face a glow of pale turquoise and flares of vermillion. It’s an odd time to notice that the shell of Keith’s ear that peeks out from behind an inky curl of hair is an unfamiliar shape.

In fact, it looks categorically human.

Keith notices Shiro’s shift in attention, though not to what and furrows black brows. “What.”

Shiro wants to ask, but it’s undeniably poor timing. He shakes his head, clears his throat. “Nothing, sorry.” A conversation for another day. “So what I’m gathering is that what happened out there was not an electromagnetic pulse.” That’s obvious by now, but meteorites couldn’t be possible either amidst the mess of physics and weather that shielded this planet. 

“Something hit us. Something big.” Keith continues to nurse his lower lip, taps his fingers against his elbow. His eyes look like glass bowl mirrors, a glitter of screens reflected as he stares.

“What, like a comet? A ship? A satellite?” Shiro’s tone of voice is incredulous, because as much sense as it makes, the percentage of theoretical improbability is still too high. Keith knows this, too. 

“I don’t know. But whatever it is,” he turns, and as he does, Shiro notes their proximity and steps back an inch or two. Keith doesn’t seem to notice. His arms unfold, and he brandishes from his palm what could be none other than Shiro’s beacon. “It fried this little guy.” 

He plucks it from Keith’s hand and turns it over. It looks perfectly intact, but remains unresponsive to any poking or prodding. There’s one too many variables to isolate and form a plan. It’s likely Pidge had predicted a potential override and installed a back up protocol. But to determine whether or not those, too, had been taken out depends on adequate tools and identifying what crash landed; neither of which they’re well equipped to do.

“You can’t siphon data from this like you did my suit, huh…?” He states it, knowing the answer already. Keith affirms it with a slow shake of his head, brows pinched. Damaged as it was, Shiro’s suit had a little life left in it. The same cannot be said of the beacon.

“I can tinker with it. But I can’t promise anything.” 

There’s a risk involved that goes unspoken. Sensitive information, should Keith succeed in reviving the mechanism, would be readily available for the taking and Shiro would be none the wiser. It’s entirely dependent on Keith’s integrity and Shiro knows well that should he take no risk, whatever details there were would be safe for certain, but he wouldn’t know them, either. It doesn’t take him long to decide.

He extends his arm and presses the beacon into Keith’s hand. 

“Better in your care than mine.” It’s a silent gesture of trust.

“You sure about that?” Maybe not so silent. Keith pulls no punches and Shiro can’t help but admire the vivid absence of formality. Something about it strikes Shiro a little funny, a little refreshing, and perhaps Keith rides the same wave because his lips quirk up a little, too. 

“It’s difficult not to trust someone who’s saved you more than once.” 

The expression Keith regards him with is different. “You’re not how I thought you’d be.” The remark takes Shiro entirely by surprise. 

“What do you mean by that?” He thinks he sees Keith catch himself then, like he’s let something slip he hadn’t meant to. 

“You’re...kind... for someone who’s survived humanity’s worst recorded civil war.” Keith says it with the suggestion of suspicion, but not quite and somehow it’s endearing. Shiro smiles and gives a cock of his head that’s arguably nonchalant.

“And environmental collapse.” He says it like it’s a negligible caveat. Keith scoffs, toying with the beacon in hand. It looks as though he’s turning something over in mind, trying to make sense of it, but it could be Keith is finally feeling the concussion he’s likely to have. What he says next isn’t what Shiro expects at all.

“Your crew mates. What are their names again?” 

Shiro blinks. “Ah...Pidge, Hunk, and Lance. Those are the immediate ones.” He’s shared their names before. Keith meditates on it a moment, then punctuates his next words with a brandish of the beacon.

“I’ll work on this. In the meantime, if you want access to certain information, ask.” He moves past Shiro and toward the opposite wall of hexagonal honeycomb windows, still shuttered shut. He unlocks the door to a tiny storage unit tucked along the wall with a more archaic lock system and from it, he procures what looks like communicators. He turns, tossing one to Shiro who, with his good arm, catches it effortlessly.

“I can’t have you browsing all the bunker’s archives, but depending on what you want to look for, I can point you in the right direction.” He taps at the thin, transparent screen of his communicator, and the one in Shiro’s hand lights up a moment later. A message. 

Something about it feels oddly personal. 

Something about it feels odd. 

Shiro clutches the devices, brows guttered, and feels compelled to speak. “Why are you doing this? You don’t even know me...” 

Keith gives a sniff, a secret amusement, and secures the storage door. “You’re right. I don’t.” He moves as he speaks, starts cutting power, casual, and pauses only in the doorway afterward. “But we all need a hand sometimes.” There’s almost an innocence to it, the way Keith says it, and something a bit like heartache. 

Keith had called him kind for what he’d endured. Of the two of them, Shiro’s uncertain kindness is his kingdom. 

There is a shift in something, subtle and silent, as Shiro watches Keith go. The room is pitched in shadow aside from the dull glow of cabin lights and Shiro thinks, of all the things he could mull over in this moment, it’s the communicator in his hand he can’t shake from his head. 

-

Three days following, it lights with a message. He’s not used it, nor Keith, since he’d received it. 

Amidst a stretch before a workout, Shiro takes pause to regard it.

‘ _Bad news.’_

Shiro feels compelled to snark, to respond with an old fashioned, delightfully applicable ‘ _sorry, new phone, who dis?’_ but there is the likelihood Keith’s human connection is not so deep as to understand reference to the nihilistic humor specific to the twenty-first century. So he doesn’t, and takes solace that Lance would probably be proud. Maybe.

Maybe he’s going a little crazy.

The communicator glows again with another message before Shiro can type anything back. 

‘ _Control room’_

Something about Keith’s entire lack of regard for Shiro’s schedule is funny. He entertains the possibility that he’s reached the ‘hilarity’ stage of isolation and can’t remember if what follows is a more worrisome stage. He goes to the control room, a skip to his step. 

When he arrives, Keith’s expression is grim, and Shiro remembers ‘bad news’, as though he somehow had forgotten. And somehow, he had, abashedly tucking away the observation that he might have been distracted by something like excitement. It’s been a while since he’s been sent ‘messages’, in his defense. 

Keith’s three years in solitude would likely find it laughably pathetic. 

“I have an update to share.” 

It’s the first Keith says when Shiro arrives and already it’s alarming. 

“Must be serious if you’re sharing with _me_.” Keith’s been good at keeping secrets and Shiro’s come to respect the boundary. This is entirely new for them and Shiro tries not to feel like a boy scout with a new badge. 

“Seeing as it affects you directly, it’s best you know.”

A stone settles in his gullet; anticipation like a prickle of anxiety along his spine and the flats of his palms. 

“I’ve been tracing the storm patterns for a break in the weather. Usually, two months from now, we see some relief.” Keith pulls up the schematics; a holographic spread of the planet and its climate. 

Shiro already knows the direction of the conversation, the muscle of his jaw locked. 

“How long.” It’s all he asks. 

Keith regards him with a tight expression. 

“We’re looking at six more months. At least.”

Shiro, with carefully practiced precision, does nothing. It’s triple the time left he’d anticipated to endure and it’s a volley of agitation he has to mitigate in an instant. Something terse and tinged in ire flares through him, and he breathes deep to temper the fire.

“Want to spar?” 

It catches Shiro entirely off guard, expecting some manner of jest, but finds himself looking at the face of a very serious Keith. He answers Shiro’s unasked question next.

“I have a room.”

There is something so immediately cathartic about Keith’s recognition of bitter fury, and the need for an outlet. In fact, he can’t remember the last time someone pegged him for a man in need of a punching bag. Composure doesn’t often leave him so exposed.

“You don’t think I’ll hurt you?”

He says it in a way that has Keith popping a hip and leveling him a look of someone amused.

“Nope.”

The simple informality of it tickles something combative and reactionary in Shiro, a muscle slides in his jaw. Keith’s eyes are a glitter of mischief.

“Where’s the room.”

-

The room had not been intended as a training area originally. That much is evident upon first impression alone. What had likely been a storage unit for larger equipment had been repurposed for whatever manner of physical training Keith practiced. There is a scatter of discreet destruction in quiet corners of the place that suggest something unbridled and violent happened; perhaps more than once.

Keith pays no mind to it and walks across the expanse of the floor toward a set of personal training accessories. Shiro follows partway, and watches as Keith sheds the top layer of his suit. The outfit underneath is fitted, dark in color and stretches tight along his torso, ending halfway up his throat. The legs of it terminate at Keith’s ankles in a stirrup style that allows skin contact at the balls and heels of his feet. There are no sleeves, and as Keith turns to decorate his hands in a pair of fingerless gloves, Shiro can see the expanse of his shoulders are primarily exposed; interrupted only by a strip of the dark fabric that tapers along his spine like a racer back. 

The design has the sophisticated elegance of a dancer, but Shiro isn’t the slightest bit pacified. He’s no stranger to the knowledge that Keith is dressed to bend in ways he cannot. He can boast of a body well packed with muscle, but Keith is not lacking too terribly in comparison. 

“How’s your arm.” Keith asks this as he busies himself with what looks to be the makings of a french braid. 

Shiro can’t name why, but he feels like prey being circled. It should be a feeling that leaves him cold. He feels, instead, like fire. 

“Healed on the surface.”

Keith finishes tying the end of his hair. “And beneath the surface?”

Shiro doesn’t take his eyes from him as he offers only a shrug. Lying is no benefit to him, but confessing a weakness outright feels dangerous. _Keith_ feels dangerous. 

It’s exhilarating.

“Hm. Shame.” Shiro blinks, and Keith closes the distance between them in an instant. 

They move swift and barbed with instinct; a flurry of quick strikes and grabs that test agility and strength in succession. The moment one seizes an advantage, the other quickly levels the playing field again. It continues like this, an explosive back and forth that takes brief hiatus only when Shiro grapples Keith into a form of headlock. 

“No gloves to share?” Shiro jibes between heavy breaths. Keith, hands splayed across Shiro’s bicep, grip tight as he kicks up, as though to perform a backflip. His thighs clamp Shiro’s head, Keith’s body a coil around him, and immediately, Shiro tumbles forward as Keith slips away. 

“I have another pair. They wouldn’t fit you, though.” He’s back on his feet, similarly labored and vaguely flush with exertion. Shiro observes from the floor, and lifts his brows at the comment. Keith is quick to respond to it.

“Your size isn’t a compliment if you can’t do anything with it.” 

“Oh,” Shiro huffs, tucks knees to roll back onto his shoulders, and springs himself to his feet. He takes a moment to shuck off his exercise shirt. His skin is sheen with sweat. “There’s plenty I can do with it.” 

He doesn’t bother reading Keith’s reaction, and settles low before he charges. He makes contact, and air rushes from Keith’s lungs upon impact. It’s not uncommon that Shiro’s speed is underestimated when weighed against his size. But he hadn’t always been blessed with muscled bulk. Being quick had punctuated the weaker days of his past and he did not forget their lessons. 

Resilience, however, rallies in Keith even so, and they are soon in the thick of it once again. Merciless describes their scuffle with cutting accuracy, a thrilling performance in physical combat that has Shiro testing his limits in ways he can’t recall ever happening. They fall into rhythm, a dance of blows and blocks and Shiro can hear little else than the thunder of his pulse, the heat of their breath and the shuffle of skin. 

The moment is ruptured when Keith breaks Shiro’s balance, and all at once, Keith is above him and driving down with purpose. Shiro doesn’t fight it, not immediately. 

“We have a lot of time together ahead of us,” Keith rasps, voice graveled from the fight and heavy with breath. Shiro tests the hold a little, it doesn’t budge easily so be bides his time.

“Why does that sound like a threat?” He’s too breathless to laugh as he says it. Keith, however, torques Shiro tighter and a burst of pain white hot radiates through him from his arm. 

“It is.” Keith growls low and jagged, and before Shiro can inquire, another sweep of blinding pain erupts as Keith twists tighter. “Yield!” He barks and Shiro is struck with the idea that perhaps this had been Keith’s intention from the beginning. That doesn’t settle right. Shiro tests the hold, meets with resistance and Keith, evidently intending haste, retaliates with yet an even tighter hold that makes Shiro’s ears ring. “I said _yield!”_

“I yield!” With immediacy, Shiro’s limbs are liberated and Keith retracts as though burned. Their breath is heavy, Shiro’s more than Keiths, and they’re slow to pick themselves off the floor. Keith is upright before Shiro, tugging the tie from his hair and untangles the muss of a braid that remains. Favoring his arm, Shiro regards him with an expression of agitated curiosity. 

“What the hell was that about, Keith.” 

Keith spares him a look before redirecting his gaze, gathering his hair up to tie in a messy ball. “Didn’t I say it was a threat?” He swipes an elbow across his forehead and pointedly avoids Shiro’s eyes henceforth. It should leave Shiro with a sense of unease and a taste of duplicity, but Shiro is familiar enough with Keith by now that all he feels is annoyance. 

“And why, pray tell, am I being threatened.” 

There is a catch in Keith’s composure, like he’d been caught in a lie and Shiro muses that perhaps deception is not a practice Keith has to delineate beyond brief acquaintanceship. The two of them, at this point, were certainly well beyond that.

“How is what you said a threat, Keith.” Shiro applies pressure and Keith is visibly tense. Shiro thinks Keith will remain stubbornly aloof, but he faces Shiro after a moment; fingers clenched at his sides.

“You know I’m not human.” 

It is not a topic Shiro had been anticipating. His interest piques and he can’t stop himself from assessing Keith’s very human form as if to challenge the claim. Keith notices it, weathers it well, but can’t hide the flush that glows coral colored on the crest of his very human ears.

“I’m _not,”_ Keith punctuates before he draws a slow and deliberate breath. “...I’m a galra hybrid.” 

When he next meets Shiro’s eyes, there’s a kind of shadow over him, as though an irreversible shift had taken place between them and he’s to be forever altered in the eyes of his only company.

Shiro blinks.

“...I think I might be missing something.” It feels as though the punchline has dramatically evaded him. Keith balks.

“...Um, It’s - you _do_ know the galra...right?” Needless to say, the atmospheric shift is considerable. Shiro sniffs, incredulous as he nods. 

“Hard to forget the alien race that invaded Earth before she collapsed.” 

Somehow, Keith only looks further flummoxed by the response. “And you’re not-- you don’t want to, I don’t know...enact revenge?” He sounds utterly aporetic, as though he’d prepared to face off to the death then and there and was almost aggravated to be wrong about it. 

Shiro can’t help the snort and Keith, abruptly, turns a vivid shade of pink.

“I’m _fucking serious_ , Shiro!” A fight to the death may be inevitable as Keith looks primed to defend his dignity. Shiro is quick to amend, palms up by means of apology, though he can’t quite stop the shaking of his shoulders as he swallows laughter. 

“I’m sorry, Keith. Truly,” He speaks around the mirth that crowds his mouth. “To answer you, no; I have no desire or intention to ‘enact revenge’.” He does well not to laugh at the tail of it. “Galra didn’t destroy Earth. Sure, they didn’t help, but that didn’t force humans to cannibalism.” At that, Keith looks precipitously horrified. “Metaphorically speaking,” Shiro adds quickly and Keith breathes relief. He doesn’t, however, look wholly convinced. The crease of Keith’s brow is an all too familiar expression. Shiro knows it quite well. 

“Keith, I’m not exactly itching to neutralize one of the few benevolent individuals I’ve come across in the universe.” 

It hadn’t been Shiro’s intention, but Keith looks suddenly flustered at the remark, as though it had been a statement of flattery. Evidently, Keith had not equated his behavior toward Shiro as benevolent at all. 

“I...wouldn’t go that far,” he chews it out, and Shiro grins. 

“I would,” he quips and Keith flounders with it; the vulnerability curious and new. Shiro entertains it only a moment longer before he shifts gears, folds his arms and pins the man with an accusatory look.

“So. You wrenched my arm for nothing. That hurt, you know.” He’s not terribly serious.

Keith whips a scowl in his direction, yet his face is still stained peachy pink. “Excuse me for assuming the blood thirsty reputation of my heritage could spark a deadly fight with the last species we tried to annihilate. How presumptuous of me.” Shiro laughs, and Keith doesn’t appear too put out by it.

It occurs to Shiro then that this is the most they’ve ever spoken. 

“Well correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t appear to be in allegiance with the Galran empire regardless. The human race is also at war with itself, so,” Shiro shrugs, “who am I to point fingers?” 

Keith takes a familiar pose of popped hips and crossed arms. “Keen eye. How’d you figure?”

Shiro scoffs. “Brief as our encounter was, they weren’t exactly subtle about who they were.” A snort of amusement comes from Keith. “Plus, they seemed to covet pure galran lineage, and there’s no way you’re not partly human.” 

He’s met with a narrow look. “You don’t know that.” Keith challenges. Shiro levels with him and doesn’t budge. 

“Your name is _Keith.”_ He’s met with sour silence and a tart expression. It is, Shiro muses in quiet delight, an unspoken ‘touché’. 

“Like I said; wrenched my arm for nothing.” Shiro, suddenly and without preamble, drops into an offensive position. Like an animal catching wind of a threat, Keith bristles and Shiro can nearly see the pupils of Keith’s eyes dilate wide and dark like a cat. They’re in the thick of a grapple in seconds, the engagement of the scuffle newly intimate and uniquely invigorating. It can be liberating to find another ally in a vast and volatile universe. 

But that’s not it. Not quite. Not fully. 

They throw one another around the room, steady, hard, heavy, and Shiro thinks there’s something familiar about their dance that shouldn’t be. They stop only when time becomes a blur and neither possess strength enough to continue. As Shiro lay, his eyes roam the walls, tracing the grooves of bites in the metal that decorate some damaged corners. They’re clipped little slices, carved out strikes from a jagged edge or blade. He wonders how they got there, but exhaustion calls his attention elsewhere and he forgets to ask.

His arm aches.

\--

There’s a dream Shiro begins to have; repetitive, simple, nostalgic. He thinks it's of the ocean. There is a sun there, warm, rich; yellow. There are fish and waves and currents. Life is abundant, vivid, colorful. He thinks he hears a snap, and suddenly, he can’t breathe. 

He struggles for air, and as his vision tilts to grayscale, he wakes up, gasping.

It leaves him with a feeling he can’t shake, like something needs to heal, something massive and gaping. The feeling lingers long after waking, and sometimes, he wakes in a haze, thinking if only he could breathe beneath the surf, he could understand.

But that, of course, is impossible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed the third chapter and please leave a comment of any thoughts you had!


	4. Green

* * *

G R E E N

* * *

They’ve taken to sparring often since the first. 

It’s an effective distraction from the pressing hysteria and, Shiro notes, has become a space of easy conversation, where learning one another has become an expedited affair and swapping secrets becomes tradition after swapping blows. 

“So you’re telling me you’re a werewolf.” 

“I’m definitely _not_ telling you I’m a werewolf.” 

Shiro frowns. 

“Keith, you just said your body changes with the phases of the moon, I’m not sure how else I’m to comprehend this.” All things considered, Shiro feels he’s handling this very well and Keith isn’t quite appreciating that. 

“I meant that it happens in phases, like the full moon and, y’know, other bodily cycles people go through!” It’s been a month, and the shell of Keith’s ears have begun to taper again, familiar to the shape Shiro had first seen of them. With the extension of their isolation, there is no hiding the full transformation. Shiro simply hadn’t realized quite the extent to which Keith’s body would actually change. Evidently, he’d hidden it well behind the mask. 

“You said, what...your ears, your teeth, your eyes, and hair change?” Shiro counts a finger for each he’s listed. Keith appears to see the correlation more with every finger and almost doesn’t add that he does, in fact, sprout a little tail as well. Shiro’s eyebrows shoot up and a stripe of red lights across Keith’s cheeks. 

“It’s a galran hormone cycle I go through as a hybrid, I’m not a fucking _werewolf_ ,” Keith bites it out and Shiro throws his head back in laughter because how could he not. Then, it happens. 

_“You totally are! You’re a goddamn alien werewolf!”_

Lance.

Shiro’s laughter stops, and he’s met with the hush of the room. There’s a moment of mania, a clash of what he knows and what he heard, and when he sweeps the training area and finds only Keith and himself, it’s unsettling to grasp that he had, in fact, expected to see one more. 

That can’t be good.

“That’s a weird look.” Keith tips his body into Shiro’s line of vision, head cocking as hair tied up and back dangles from the tilt. Shiro looks at him and Keith’s expression pinches. “You alright?”

He feels the instinct to reassure surge, to dismiss the moment for some vagrant hallucination. He fights it. 

“...I thought I heard a crew mate of mine just now.” He says it and knows he sounds crazed. Keith keeps composure, an anchor in Shiro’s momentary chaos. In retrospect, Keith is more likely to understand the madness of isolation best between the two of them. 

“Voices? Please don’t tell me you’re losing it. I was just beginning to tolerate your company.” It’s almost a genuine question if Keith is serious and Shiro’s grateful for the humor it grants him. He shoves the man, light, playful, and Keith is grinning.

“Punk.” 

A beat passes, comfortable, before Keith speaks again; voice a quiet, conversational curiosity.

“Whose voice?” 

Shiro hadn’t expected the question, but it’s not an unpleasant surprise.

“...Lance.” He speaks like recalling a fond memory. “Lighthearted kind of guy; goofy.” Shiro chuckles at some unspoken recollection. “He’d probably carry childhood innocence to his grave.” Shiro does not notice, but Keith is watching intently, drawn to the mirth in Shiro’s eyes. 

“I’m surprised a guy like that has survived this long.” Keith’s tone suggests equal parts sincerity and jest. It’s applicably humorous enough that Shiro snorts. 

“I’ve got a unique team for sure,” Shiro says with melancholic fondness. 

“Oh? Are they all oddballs, too?” Keith teases, chasing the tails of Shiro’s merriment before it’s smothered in something sorrowful. Shiro notices this, subtle and sweet, and wonders if Keith can’t see a similar innocence alive within himself. 

“No more odd than you,” Shiro quips, lips curled and Keith, without warning, pounces. There is laughter as they tumble, an amicable scuffle that becomes a bit more serious than likely intended. Testing each other comes naturally, both competitive and capable, and the physical grapple allows for tangible release of their stress. They are, in a word, alarmingly compatible. 

It ends with Keith above him staring down; his hair a black spill that almost tickles Shiro’s nose. It’s gotten longer and Shiro wonders if he’s in need of a cut himself. Probably. 

“Tell me about your crew.” Keith’s voice is low as he asks, inquisitive, and were it two months earlier, Shiro would not have seen the brief glimmer of mourning in his eyes. Three years between contact, Keith said he’d endured.

It is, Shiro thinks with something like heartache, a very long time to be alone. 

“Okay.”  
  
And he does.

\--

Shiro wakes, gasping.

The dream comes frequently, now. It’s a rhythm of color in the tides stripped bare and he can’t understand why. It feels like a message, like some idea trying to take root as he dreams. 

It feels like he’s going mad.

He gets up still breathless and dizzy, plucks up the communicator, sends a single message to Keith and waits. 

By the time his lungs have cooled, Keith has not yet responded. It is, admittedly, the middle of their slumber period. ‘Night’ had become inconsequential in their circumstance. After a moment more, Shiro decides a solo venture to the training room will have to suffice. Best to let Keith sleep.

He steps out, all nerve and tension, and against the dark he sees the distant glow of the control room. It’s a sight he’s not seen for some time. Curious still, should Keith be awake, he had not responded to Shiro’s message. Likely as it is that Keith, ever vigilant and emotionally obtuse, had not seen it yet, Shiro’s feeling puckish. 

He’s noiseless as he moves, having learned Keith’s ears hear more acutely as they change, and peers into the room. Sure enough, Keith stands with his back to him, silhouette illuminated from the grid of screens and Shiro moves to speak. 

The words cluster and die, mirth abandoning him in a rush as he sees the tremble of Keith’s shoulders. 

Shiro stills as he stares, as though he is mistaken and his eyes are deceiving him, somehow. But the glint of wet cheeks is visible. Shiro pulls back quick, ducking away like he’s stumbled upon something he shouldn’t have, and toils. Were it two months prior, he would have stepped away and allowed Keith his privacy without question. It’s ironic to find that knowing Keith better has him stuck. 

There is a muffled sob and Shiro’s gut twists with it. 

_“I think, maybe, he would like your company.”_

It’s soft, weaving seamlessly into the quiet and Shiro, temporarily yet wholly deluded, turns around to speak to Hunk. He stops short when he sees, of course, no one. 

He tells himself to breathe. _Breathe._

It’s a terrible time for an episode of psychosis, but there’s no good time for one, really. He swallows thick, lightly knocks his head back against the wall and takes another breath; deep and even. The communicator is clutched in one hand, and after a beat, Shiro turns and begins to walk.

If there is a place Keith wants comfort, Shiro knows the most likely place he’ll go. It is, after all, where he’d intended to go himself.

\--

Keith doesn’t come.

Not right away. Shiro had stepped into the empty expanse of the training room, half anticipating the man to be hot on his heels. But Shiro is alone, and alone he stays for the next hour and a half. He decides to limber up first, stretching muscles and shaking off the stiffness of slumber. His arm has become suspiciously numb to the residual pain of his injury, but Shiro has kept diligent enough with the medicines available, and there is little else to be done. He tries not to think much of it. 

He works up a sweat as he waits. It’s possible it will be a solitary performance, and one who wastes not, wants not. Sometimes, anyway. 

After the first hour, Shiro is winded and flush with exercise. He turns about the room, a cooldown of sorts and allows his eyes to skate the familiar gashes along the walls. He’s not asked of them, and at this point, it is unnecessary. There is a reason he had been allowed in the control room first despite the training area’s comparative irrelevance. 

He comes to stand before a small cluster of destruction, traces a thumb along a jagged groove in the hard surface. Stepping back, he regards the expanse of damage all about the room and thinks, whatever drove Keith’s blade to bite so viciously into metal over and over, is a private torment Shiro will respect. It’s Keith's secret, and the wish to share it or not is his alone.

It’s little under thirty minutes following that Shiro, mid stretch, hears the door click open and turns to see Keith.

There is much, at this point, different about Keith’s appearance as the phase of his shift is nearly full; yet the first Shiro notes of him is the red of his eyes. Shiro has observed in their months together, that despite Keith’s valiant endeavors of taciturn indifference, he is, contrarily, heart achingly earnest. 

It’s how Shiro knew he’d come.

They say nothing and soon, they clash. 

The exchange is reminiscent of their first spar; passionate and enthralled. But there is an edge of hysteria in the cut of Keith’s moves. Coupled with sharpened senses, there’s something animal about it, yet in it sits a stain of something human. Something like grief. 

Keith is incredible. He moves more deftly than before, fluid and ferocious and it takes everything for Shiro to keep up. But he does, and they toss each other around the room with a suggestion of bitter violence. Shiro finds quickly that holding back at all is fruitless and it’s an invigorating, terrifying liberty; for the moment he slams Keith into the ground with a roar, Keith’s body smacking with heavy impact and a growl of agony, Shiro’s face is swept up between muscled thighs and has not a second to admire it before he’s twisted and flung off his feet. The freedom to fight without constraint is contested immediately by Keith’s deadly proficiency at hand to hand combat. 

It continues like this, blows and holds that wring the air from them both with grunts, cries, growls. They’re noisy as their bodies collide and coil, the air around them humid and jaws slack like panting dogs. There is a wild look about Keith, feral with anger and that something else; that something like grief. It’s raw, animositous emotion taking form in a fight and Shiro meets his fire with a blaze of his own.

Keith wraps Shiro into a knot, legs encircling his throat and shoulder while his arms lock up Shiro’s remaining limbs. Shiro hisses as Keith tightens, savage in his grip and they’re close enough to feel the torrid air of their heavy breathing. Shiro heaves against him and Keith jolts, but snaps tighter with a snarl and Shiro’s teeth grind through a howl of pain. He heaves again, their bodies bucking against tested strength. The slighter of the two, Keith can slip into inflexible positions and hold taut. Though nicely muscled, his forte is limber agility and Shiro is no match for that. 

In a test of pure strength, however, there is no question of whose the victor.

Shiro’s knees shift against the floor, struggling against the hold before his core hardens, his shoulders flare and, once again, he heaves. Something, somewhere, slips. Keith makes a sound as Shiro hoists their knotted bodies off the floor and, with effort, cracks them back down against it. Keith’s back takes the brunt of it, the cry he makes breathless and guttural. Shiro wrestles free in the stun and, after a brief tussle, he’s wrapped up Keith’s arms behind his back and folded his body over Shiro’s thigh. 

Keith struggles against the hold, and perhaps were he not exhausted, he’d contest Shiro’s show of brute strength. But one leg free is not enough, and Shiro bearing down keeps him effectively pinned. Their breathing is ragged, and Shiro does not release him, even as Keith has manifestly lost. He thrashes once, a burst of something furious and desperate with a gritty keen bellowing from his throat. But Shiro weathers it and keeps Keith beneath him. 

Their bodies are firmly pressed together, Keith’s face against the floor as Shiro holds him. They’re flush from the fray, mouths lolled open as they drag in lungfuls of air. They stay that way for a moment, and Shiro draws back enough to see, beneath a curtain of dark bangs, Keith is watching him. 

A stripe of red glows across Keith’s cheeks, ruddy from over exertion. His lips are parted with heavy breath, throat scratchy and parched, and through a canopy of lashes, Keith watches Shiro as Shiro watches Keith. The moment lasts too long.

Shiro pulls back, finally, and Keith unfolds against the floor. 

They take a beat to recover, coming back to themselves in stages. There is an atmosphere about them, however, that hasn’t quite settled. An image of weariness, Keith pushes himself upright and settles his eyes on Shiro once more. When Shiro looks, he sees a calm that had been absent before, but Keith’s eyes still burn.

Arousal lies thick between them, and Shiro feels it in his throat and the scorch of his cheeks. It startles him, how his inclination to acquiesce feels natural; easy. Keith looks alarmingly good roughed up and subdued, and Shiro is so fucking _lonely._ They _both_ are.

Shiro stands, lethargic, and breathes deep to center himself. He swings his eyes to Keith, still seated, who says nothing; eyes still rimmed with red. Shiro’s arm extends, the flat of his palm turned up, and Keith, eventually, takes it.

He’s hoisted up, and Shiro soon finds he must support their weight in full, lest Keith buckle to the ground and stay there. They walk together, limp and exhausted, until Keith is deposited in his bed, and Shiro must hobble back to his alone. He collapses against it, once he’s there, and thinks of only Keith’s eyes before he’s fast asleep.

They’d never said a word. They didn’t need to.

\--

There is a kitchen of sorts, and a small mock dining facility in the bunker; more practical than emulant of domesticity. Shiro has used it intermittently, but without the familiar bustle of activity, it’s not a place he frequents, or stays. 

Meals, he was taught, are a time of social gathering, of stories, of laughter; of friends and family coming together to be merry. It is something he learned from his grandparents, and something he’d forgotten until time and circumstance brought Hunk into his life. And for that, he is incredibly grateful.

It’s difficult, weathering a meal alone. Yet life is sometimes solitary, and meals cannot always be shared. 

Shiro selects a packaging of rations for his breakfast, and as he prepares, he entertains a memory.

It is of Lance and Pidge, gathered impatiently around Hunk as he busies himself about the kitchen of their ship. They are fresh from a scuffle with other scavengers and all are eager to forget for a moment the ruthlessness of their circumstance. It’s hard to remember you’ve killed people when you’re waiting for a pie. 

It should be a morbid thought, but it’s all that’s keeping them sane. Losing your home planet and fighting your brethren is, as it turns out, emotionally taxing to say the least. 

_“Isn’t this kind of fucked up?_ ” Lance manifests the atmosphere into words, but looks too drained for anything beyond.

“ _Sure is. S’why I’m baking a pie_ ,” says Hunk as he kneads dough into the counter. 

“ _Hurry and finish so I can brag to Matt back on base_.” Pidge is, at this point, apathetic. She had, after all, been the one to recover the salvageables from the wreckage. Flour had been among them. 

There is a brief exchange about preserving materials, but Hunk halts that conversation entirely.

 _“Listen, Earth is gone and we’re killing each other over it; if there’s means to bake a pie, I’m going to bake a pie._ ” The way he says it almost makes Shiro laugh. “ _Without Earth, and in war, we’re still human. It’s important to remember what makes us that way._ ” Somehow, they all know it’s not pie Hunk is talking about. 

While it bakes, Hunk fills the silence in hushed recollection. “ _Y’know, we used to eat to survive. But in time, we got to eat to enjoy._ ” His arms are thick as they’re folded and rest against his belly. The flour caked on his palms looks snow white against the dark of his skin. “ _Sometimes, at least_ .” His eyes are honey warm and melancholic chamomile. _“I don’t want to lose that.”_

The timer rings. The smell is exquisite. 

Hunk is careful as he cuts through the beautifully browned crust and grants a piece to each of them. Lance initiates a toast with fork lifted, and pie speared on the end of it. 

“ _To life_ ,” he says, sincere. 

Pidge toasts next. “ _To Earth_ ,” their eyes are glassy.

Hunk follows suit. “ _To humanity_ ,” and they look to Shiro, who looks back and sees, through the veil of sorrow, a family. A little lost, a little broken, but family all the same. 

“ _To flour_.” He says. Somehow, they all know it’s not the flour Shiro’s talking about.

Shiro finishes preparing his breakfast, and sits in the quiet of the dining room.

It’s a genuine surprise when, not a minute later, Keith steps in and they lock eyes. He looks the way one would after a night of emotional chaos. He may be mistaken, but Shiro thinks he spots a pink to Keith’s cheeks before he turns and makes to prepare his own packaged breakfast. To Shiro’s surprise again, once Keith finishes, he plops himself down across from Shiro, scoops most of his hair up into a bun, and starts to eat. 

Shiro can’t help but appreciate the nonchalance. Young as he is, he’s an adult, and after all he’s endured, he hasn’t the capacity to entertain immaturity. It’s certainly no insult to him for Keith to like what he sees. Shiro is no different.

At their proximity, and not amidst a physical brawl, it’s easy to observe Keith’s features. Shiro can admit without blinking that Keith is attractive. He’d thought so from the beginning; it simply wasn’t a priority. But as time drags on, priority becomes increasingly skewed, and hearing voices really doesn’t help. So Shiro looks at Keith, because at this point, why wouldn’t he.

His ears have gone from an elvan taper to a somewhat fox-like shape. They, by now, look more animal than human, and visibly twitch toward sound as an animal would, which is terribly distracting in a not unpleasant way. Keith’s canines are sharpened, his eyes are catlike, and in subtle symmetrical spots on Keith’s body, the characteristically galran pigment of purple colors him. Atop Keith’s ears is a more even, solid bleed of the purple, but the little that decorates Keith’s face, near his cheeks and eyes, spreads more like freckles. They’re light in color, just a suggestion of his lineage, and look very much like the spots on a giraffe. It’s unlike the galra Shiro had seen. Perhaps it is a hybrid thing. 

Keith catches Shiro staring and Shiro fills his mouth with food. It makes Keith snort.

“Sorry,” he says, suddenly, “about last night.” 

Shiro blinks, swallows his food. “What’s there to be sorry about?” 

Keith shrugs. “Trying to kill you.” He takes a casual bite of his rations. It looks like oatmeal.

A thick black brow of Shiro’s quirks. “You were hardly trying to kill me.” Keith, cheek ballooned with food, shrugs. It’s noncommittal, and Shiro snorts. If Keith had been trying to kill him, well, he hadn’t succeeded, clearly. Additionally, homicide was not all Keith had entertained last night. 

“Is that the only thing you’re sorry for?” It’s bold, and Shiro nearly surprises himself with it. But Keith’s eyes flick up and his ears perk forward. Shiro endures the look. Keith considers him, quiet, before going back to eating. 

“Pretty much.” He says it with little flush to his face. Shiro does well to keep from grinning. Okay. It’s unexpected, but not unwelcome. He doesn’t dwell on it beyond that, however. He’s not a teenager, and getting a boner at breakfast isn’t ideal. 

They eat their meal in an oddly comfortable silence. It’s Keith again who breaks it, as Shiro finishes his portion.

“Thank you.” It’s even softer than his ‘sorry’ was. Keith appears more embarrassed at his rage than his arousal, and Shiro is weak to it. He has a unique brand of honesty, the kind that cuts to the core of it and leaves Shiro feeling a little refreshed, a little endeared and a little heartbroken. Emotion, it seems, doesn’t come easy to Keith, but when he does, it’s wholehearted and sincere. It’s quite unlike the sterile rigidity of the Garrison.

It reminds him, instead, of his crew.

Shiro’s eyes grow soft. “You don’t have to thank me, Keith.” 

Of all the things to make Keith color, Shiro had not thought compassion would be it. It’s a vulnerable moment, candid, and as Keith weathers it, Shiro thinks of Hunk covered in flour; of Pidge and Lance, and the pie.

“I was a diver,” says Shiro, abruptly, “before all this.” Intended or not, Keith had been sharing small secrets all morning. It only felt right that Shiro do the same. Stories were told over meals, after all. “Life on Earth began in the ocean, so exploring the deep was much like exploring the stars.” It’s been a while since he’s visited these memories. They’re more painful than he’d thought they’d be. 

“Space was always the goal, but if we were going to discover complex life on other planets, the best place to look first would be water.” Despite the pain, however, Shiro smiles. “Never anticipated complex life coming to us, instead.”

Keith’s ears fold back, or they look to. “I’m sorry…”

Shiro shakes his head. “I was stationed in the desert; recovering from lifelong lung complications and a ruptured eardrum.” He sniffs, cocks his head and toys with his earlobe. “Ironically, it happened while diving, but it was a microgravity training dive to simulate a space walk.” 

Keith’s brows shoot up into the dark fluff of his bangs. “Wow. That _is_ ironic.” His nose scrunches, inquisitive. “So...you deaf in one ear?” 

Shiro grins. “Not anymore. Neural pathways reformed around the injury. Tenacity is a bad habit of mine.” He chuckles, because there’s plenty of hurt there, but life without humor is boring. It’s ostensibly contagious as Keith’s lips curl as well. 

“I can see that.” 

Shiro laughs then, because really, Keith would. If anyone could understand a tenacious nature, it would be Keith. The laughter fades and Shiro lets out a long breath. “Yeah,” he sighs, and his eyes go softly distant. “I was nowhere near the ocean when everything changed.” 

There’s a beat.

“I grew up in the desert.” 

Keith had not spoken once about his life. Shiro doesn’t want to disturb what compelled him to do so, thus when he prompts, he does so gently. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, after all.

“On Earth…?”

Keith nods, reflective. Caught up in a moment of whimsy, Shiro hums. “Alien life lived right under our nose, huh?” Somehow, after everything, it doesn’t surprise him one bit. Keith snorts, and tosses Shiro a playful look. 

“Hardly alien. I was practically human until puberty.” He shrugs, clearly uninterested in the science of it which Shiro finds terribly amusing. Keith is patently indifferent to how fascinating and affluent his existence is and could be; his ambitions sweetly simple. 

“Any medical tests I needed read pretty average. Blood tests looked human, urinalysis, biopsy, nothing flagged. Granted, expecting galran DNA while testing with human technology could have leant to that.” Keith remains humorously flippant, obliviously humble even, about the true potential of being a type specimen, the first of his kind, or even the last. Any scientist would be smitten. 

_“Hate to break it to you, you’re a scientist too, dude.”_

_Shut up, Lance,_ Shiro doesn’t say out loud. He would be more concerned, but he simply isn’t. Weird things happen in space sometimes, and Keith holds his attention phenomenally well. Shiro ignores how beautifully it proves “Lance’s” point.

“My gene expression appeared human but true to their word, I guess, galran blood runs thick.” Keith scoops the last of his food into his mouth and chews. After he swallows, he takes a moment before continuing. “So I left with my mom.” 

He straightens and, reaching, he tugs his hair free from the bun and shakes it loose. “I’ve never seen the ocean. Not on Earth’s surface, at least.” Shiro watches Keith sift through memories he likely hasn’t shared with anyone. “The desert was all I knew. And thinking back, I thought I would be angry, but…” Keith pulls his lower lip through teeth, thoughtful. “That desert had the most incredible view of the stars.” 

It feels like every word is a piece of his heart. Like Keith doesn’t know how to communicate without giving everything. Shiro feels like he _knows_ him, beyond what he could, beyond what is possible. Space is weird, sometimes. Incredible, sometimes. 

“The desert was massive. When the canyons ended, the sands began. I’d never left but there was so much space there; so much earth.” Swept up in the memory, Keith speaks like painting a picture and Shiro just listens like he can hear wet strokes of a brush on canvas. 

“There’s a lot of color in the desert. You wouldn’t think so, but...If you really look…” Keith draws up a knee then, his pose relaxed, youthful. “There was a lot of red where I lived. That powdered, warm red from baking in the sun and mixing with clay. But there’d be these small clusters of all these types of greens; different plants like succulents and cacti that didn’t scorch.” 

Shiro can see the mural take form. 

“These flowers would bloom on them, purples, pinks, yellows,” Keith smiles, “and after a rain, which _never_ fucking happened, all the colors would just...pop,” he wades in the memory a moment; just a moment. “...So when I had to leave Earth, my dad and the desert, I thought for sure when I looked back, I would at least, of all those colors, see red.” 

A breath.

“All I could see was blue. This rich, luminous, vibrant blue.” Keith pauses to push hair from his face. “It’s funny, the desert was all I knew and I couldn’t even see it.” For Shiro, it looks to be a fond revelation of Keith’s. There’s a sadness, however, that trails it.

Shiro long noticed the bunker had been equipped for more than just Keith. Whatever rebel faction of galra Keith served, they had not deployed him here alone. It comes quick to Shiro, like the flare of a photograph that leaves spots in your vision. A memory of unfolding a piece of paper in a quiet barrack bunk bed. A letter of condolence, and autofilled signatures.

“You mentioned your mother. Is she Galran?”

“Yeah. She was.” It sounds like a wound. Old, but still tender.

“‘Was’...?” Shiro tips his chin. There’s a stretch of silence and Shiro thinks perhaps he’s overstepped. But Keith continues.

“Mm,” he’s placid, melancholic. He’d burned through his rage last night and was left with a sorrowful serenity. “Bad run in with humans on the way here.” Shame grips Shiro fierce and an apology begs to be said, but Shiro doesn’t think Keith would like that very much. So he swallows his remorse and listens. 

“Not sure if she died before or after we crash landed.” Keith doesn’t cry as he says it. Not visibly. Shiro thinks of the communicator, of the training gloves that wouldn’t fit him. Keith sniffs and idly toys with the empty ration containers in front of them. “She hated these.” His mouth curls up, and he doesn’t cry, not really. “Probably where I get it.”

“Thank you,” Shiro says, “for sharing it with me.” And Keith really isn’t crying when he lifts his eyes to him. Except he is.

“It’d be worse,” he says, “eating a meal I hate alone.”

\--

The suit still smells terrible.

Plus, it forces Shiro to temper his curiosity, and be patient. 

When he received the message ‘ _come suit up’_ some days following, Shiro hadn’t anticipated walking into the deployment hangar and seeing an inky black head replaced with fluffy snow white. 

Keith, his back facing Shiro, steps into the ever familiar maintenance suit, and before Shiro can say a word, Keith’s body is wholly engulfed in the thick, baggy material. Whatever puff of purple and white Shiro had glimpsed had been effectively covered. Even so, Shiro swears he saw a tail, among other things, and he can’t quite draw his mind away from it. 

But he suits up, as requested, and waits to seal the helmet in place because the smell really is quite terrible. 

“More line work?” He asks as they walk, helmet tucked under his arm. 

“Not exactly.” The visor of Keith’s helmet is drawn as he speaks. “Started picking up some strange energy signals that I can’t clean up. Too muddled by the storm.” 

Shiro’s brows gutter. “Huh. You think it could be from whatever made that magnetic pulse last time?” They arrive at the hatch and Keith punches the code to unlock the foyer to the outside. 

“Not sure,” Keith says as Shiro, begrudgingly, clicks his helmet in place. “They only showed up this morning. Thought I’d act fast, try and get a cleaner reading before the next pulse from the planet’s core.” He brandishes a handheld device, akin to an advanced geiger counter of sorts, presumably to help with exactly that. 

“You need my help?” The doors close to prepare for dispatch; oxygen hissing as it’s pulled back into the reserves. It’s dark, save for a glow in the metalwork and a few spots on their suits. 

“You’re not seriously complaining about a buddy system, are you?” Keith, good naturedly, elbows Shiro’s side. The gesture is friendly, playful; familiar. Shiro finds he’s beaming

“I would never. I’m happy to dig you out of the sand again if need be.” 

He can hear the smile in Keith’s voice. “That wasn’t the first time it’s happened, probably won’t be the last.” Shiro would love to know about the first time Keith had been suffocating in the sand and how, exactly, he’d survived. But the doors are opening, and all things considered, he’s not shocked Keith has cheated certain death more than once before. They’re similar like that.

A recognizable tumult of wind and rust meets them and, once properly tethered, into the storm they walk. 

As might be expected, the sands make it complicated. Like a needle in the haystack, to triangulate a foreign energy signal amidst the interference takes time and patience. Time they have in abundance. Patience is diversely distributed, with Keith the less fortunate of the two. Distracting him with talk seems to help, after two hours of circling with nothing.

“You don’t think what crash landed could be connected to the oxidized region of the planet, do you?” It’s still a mystery, one he knows Keith is a part of, but little beyond.

“Doubt it.” It sounds breathy with amusement. “That place is heavily cloaked. That’s why you were such a surprise.” It sounds like it’s said with fondness, but it’s possible Shiro’s projecting.

“What can I say, I’ve got a good team.” 

Keith snorts. “I’ll say. They even got a beacon down here.” He stops to adjust the device in hand, then continues walking. Shiro keeps up with him, bracing against the winds and keeping close watch on their tethers. Whether it is intended or not, Keith’s rare ovation is effective pep talk through the haze.  
  
“I’m guessing that’s not usually possible?” Shiro asks in a merry tone, pride evident of his peculiar little family.   
  
“Virtually _impossible_.” Keith confirms, gesturing to the chaos around them with a snort over the intercom. “I mean,” he doesn’t elaborate because he doesn’t need to. Coming up on hour three and the sixth rotation around the base with nothing to show for it speaks for itself. 

“I see your point.” Shiro concedes with a lick of humor. “Maybe it was fate that I landed here, then.”

“Maybe,” Keith’s voice sounds quiet, but the static could be to blame. They continue their search in silence, the roar of the tempest surrounding them, and Shiro nearly misses it when Keith speaks again. 

“Do you believe in it?” 

It catches Shiro off guard, and when he turns to regard Keith, the man is facing him; suit bright against the dark, earthy red.   
  
“Believe in what?” 

Keith’s voice is a crackle in his ear.

“Fate.” 

The question is simple, straight forward, average. It’s one he’d have an answer to, were it half a year earlier. But for reasons he cannot name, the sensation is profound, as though perhaps everything he’s lived through is for this moment. He thinks of the dreams, of diving into the sea, of the voices that haunt the hollows of the bunker. It could be madness, a steady seep into insanity he’s allowed to take root in the umbra of his mind. It could be.   
  
But he doesn’t think it is.

“I don’t know…” 

Keith’s face is hidden in the dark of the helmet, and he says nothing. In his hands, the device is quiet until suddenly, it isn’t. Their attention swivels to it, heart rates spiked and as they look, the readings are illegible; nonsense. 

“What the fuck…?” Keith draws it close, makes an abortive attempt at dial adjustments and repair, but the equipment doesn’t respond. There’s a swell of static over the intercom, Shiro’s hearing a muffle of white noise and he fears they’re to be caught unprepared once more in another unknown wave. But through the din of it, he hears his name; a muted cry of it that most certainly did not come from Keith. 

He looks out, scanning the wild obscurity and sees nothing. 

His pulse beats heavy as he stares, and he thinks Keith might be talking, but his voice is lost.

_“Shiro!”_

The cry is clear as a bell and Shiro whips his eyes across the sands once more. He can barely see it, when he does. It’s a vague imprint in the dust, a suggestion, but it’s there and Shiro has to swallow his heart as the blurred and broken image of Pidge takes form. 

It isn’t real. It _can’t_ be real. He knows this. And yet he cannot help but go to her. 

She’s talking to him, but their voice is a void, glitching through the relay and Shiro watches their body skew in and out of focus. He knows it’s Pidge, has recognized her voice, yet the image of them that forms and falters is unknown. They don an apparatus unfamiliar, arduous to discern against the rusts as she flickers in and out of sight; a pattern of bright blue, white, black, green; distinctly green. The closer he gets, the further they seem, but he knows they’re calling to him, reaching for him. 

“Pidge- Pidge, I can’t hear you--!” Shiro tries to call back, to bridge the gap, but he can’t hear them. He can’t hear anything.

Their hand extends, and for a moment, Shiro thinks they could nearly touch. But they don’t, and all at once, Pidge is gone, the static of the radio dissipates and Shiro is alone in the storm. His breath is heavy, heartbeat a thunder in his ears as though he’d just woken from a dream; arm still outstretched to an expanse of nothing.

A hand falls heavy on his shoulder and Keith’s voice speaks urgent. 

“We need to move, _now!”_

There’s no time to talk. 

Keith’s hand circles Shiro’s wrist and they’re running. The bunker isn’t far, but against the winds, it feels unreachable. Yet the grip of Keith’s hand is steadfast, an anchor in the storm and soon, they’re through the doors of the foyer and the metal seals closed behind them. As they recover, breath heavy, the bunker is struck by a pulse from the core; what Keith had been keen to avoid. The lights flicker, the mainframe circulating yellow warning signals and display screens. As fast as it comes, it’s gone, and systems stabilize as lights gradually brighten. 

Neither of them speak, their breath still labored. The foyer pressurizes, oxygen spilling into the atmosphere as they move toward the main entry with heavy steps. It’s not until they’re pulling off pieces of their suit does Keith speak.

“Fill me in. What happened.” It sounds neither accusatory, nor compassionate. It sounds uniquely Keith.

Shiro tugs the helmet off, taking a gulp of air. There is no point in lying. “I saw Pidge.” When he lifts his eyes to Keith, he had entirely forgotten about his fluffy white head. As though all pigment had bled dry, Keith’s hair, brows, even lashes have swapped ebony for ivory, and what had once been very human ears are now fully animal; puffs of white lining the helix while an ombre of cool purple covers the shell. Shiro had once thought them fox-like; now, they are more accurately fennec fox-like. 

That, however, is as much attention Shiro can pay to it. It is no priority, no matter how fascinating. 

“One of your team?” a pair of ivory brows gutter. “You saw them,” Keith says, not quite skeptically. After a long exhale, Shiro nods and notes the way Keith’s ears fold back.

“‘Saw’ is a bit of an exaggeration.” Shiro, exasperated, runs a hand down his face. Indeed, Pidge had never fully formed and Shiro had never really believed her to truly be there. But it is the first he’s experienced of visual hallucination. It had only ever been auditory, until now. His fingers push into his hair, longer now, and the heels of his palms press into his eyes.

“Keith,” his voice is hoarse. “Am I going crazy…?”

Keith, at first, says nothing. He’s quiet and contemplative with a bite to his body language; his ears flattened. Finally, he speaks. “Did anything else happen? Could you hear anything?” Shiro can’t quite tell if Keith is deflecting the question, or sincerely trying to make sense of what happened.   
  
Shiro almost prefers not knowing. 

Abruptly, he sits upright as an idea strikes him. He turns, snatches the helmet and starts to look it over diligently. After a beat, Shiro is procuring from a small port what looks to be a kind of data chip. Keith fills in the blanks quickly, ears perked and swiveling forward. 

“You think the suit might have footage?” He sounds almost hopeful and Shiro clings to it. 

“No idea.” Shiro turns and makes toward the control room, curling fingers around the tiny chip and endeavors not to idle on what it means if it doesn’t. 

\--

It is disarmingly intuitive to access playback features from suit documentation. Turns out, bunker tech works best with bunker equipment; who knew. Galran technology adapts well enough, but Shiro had anticipated a little struggle at least. In a word, it’s anticlimactic and Shiro attempts not to take it as a bad omen. 

There’s nearly three hours of footage preceding, and the environment is a challenge to distinguish, but even against the fury of vermillion sands, Shiro can recognize the moment as soon as he sees it. Keith had asked him about fate, just before. They watch, rigid with focus.

The video plays, and Shiro sees nothing. No Pidge, no strange suit, just storm. 

A muscle slides in his jaw. For good measure, or perhaps because he is a masochist, Shiro rewinds, and starts it again. Halfway through, and still no Pidge, Keith straightens, then pitches forward.  
  
“Wait.” 

Shiro swings eyes to Keith, blood pounding in his ears. Keith stares fervently at the screens. His eyes are keen and catlike, pupils barely a slit before, abruptly, they dilate. Leaning in, he lifts a hand and points. 

“There. Look.” 

He does, and at first, he sees nothing. But as he stares close, attentive to nearly snapping, he spots, mixed into the whirling dusts, a distortion. It’s not Pidge, but it’s something. It isn’t quite relief, but close to it, and Shiro hadn’t anticipated how stressful being on the precipice of a psychotic break could really be. He cocks his head to Keith.

“Good eye,” he says it simply, yet gratitude swells beneath the surface; like Keith is his final thread of sanity. 

But the mystery is not exactly solved. The distortion is little else than that, and doesn’t explain why, of all things, Shiro had seen Pidge in place of it. Similar to the visuals, the audio yields little but static. Keith’s ears, however, swivel forward; perked. 

“Turn it up.” He quips and Shiro gently turns the dial. The static crescendos, but that’s all that happens. There is a peculiar expression of unease on Keith’s face. “You don’t hear that?” 

Unlike the video, Shiro can’t hear whatever secret Keith has discovered. “I don’t.” He makes another attempt, though it is fruitless. Keith moves to turn the dial himself, delicate, and his brows begin to pinch as his ears flick and twitch. 

“What is it?” Shiro nearly whispers it.

“I…” Keith starts, contemplative, apprehensive. “I don’t know, it…” the volume is at capacity and Keith’s ears flatten. “...It sounds like voices.” He raises an incredulous look to Shiro, who mirrors one right back. 

A beat.

“Transcription. Is there audio transcription?” Shiro asks it with an essence of urgency, and Keith is quick to act. It seems to be a process as he taps at keys, drags data across the screens and when he makes the final click after the brief scramble, what loads is unlike anything Shiro has ever seen. 

Displayed and illuminated before them is a wall of text indiscernible. Letters, numbers, codes, symbols; an amalgamation of what looks like thousands of words in thousands of languages from thousands of voices all speaking at once. The extent of it is staggering, stretching on and on and on and of all the brimming questions that arise and crowd the moment, one stands sharp against the cluster, and the answer never comes; 

Why did Shiro see Pidge?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this first chapter, I hope you all enjoyed! If you did, please leave a comment telling me your thoughts. See you in the next chapter!


End file.
